Big Toomai had come up hotfoot from the camp in the plains to search for
his son and his elephant, and now that he had found them he looked at
them as though he were afraid of them both. And there was a feast by
the blazing campfires in front of the lines of picketed elephants,
and Little Toomai was the hero of it all. And the big brown elephant
catchers, the trackers and drivers and ropers, and the men who know all
the secrets of breaking the wildest elephants, passed him from one to
the other, and they marked his forehead with blood from the breast of a
newly killed jungle-cock, to show that he was a forester, initiated and
free of all the jungles.
And at last, when the flames died down, and the red light of the logs
made the elephants look as though they had been dipped in blood too,
Machua Appa, the head of all the drivers of all the Keddahs--Machua
Appa, Petersen Sahib s other self, who had never seen a made road in
forty years: Machua Appa, who was so great that he had no other name
than Machua Appa,--leaped to his feet, with Little Toomai held high in
the air above his head, and shouted: Listen, my brothers. Listen, too,
you my lords in the lines there, for I, Machua Appa, am speaking! This
little one shall no more be called Little Toomai, but Toomai of the
Elephants, as his great-grandfather was called before him. What never
man has seen he has seen through the long night, and the favor of the
elephant-folk and of the Gods of the Jungles is with him. He shall
become a great tracker. He shall become greater than I, even I, Machua
Appa! He shall follow the new trail, and the stale trail, and the mixed
trail, with a clear eye! He shall take no harm in the Keddah when he
runs under their bellies to rope the wild tuskers; and if he slips
before the feet of the charging bull elephant, the bull elephant
shall know who he is and shall not crush him. Aihai! my lords in the
chains, --he whirled up the line of pickets-- here is the little one
that has seen your dances in your hidden places,--the sight that never
man saw! Give him honor, my lords! Salaam karo, my children. Make your
salute to Toomai of the Elephants! Gunga Pershad, ahaa! Hira Guj, Birchi
Guj, Kuttar Guj, ahaa! Pudmini,--thou hast seen him at the dance, and
thou too, Kala Nag, my pearl among elephants!--ahaa! Together! To Toomai
of the Elephants. Barrao!
And at that last wild yell the whole line flung up their trunks till the
tips touched their foreheads, and broke out into the full salute--the
115