voice called him back. The grass gave way to bamboo thickets, the smell
of the huts to the wild, bewitching perfumes of the jungle.

Then, still in silence, because there are decencies to be observed by
animals no less than men, he walked forward with his trunk outstretched
into the primordial jungle and was born again.


III

Muztagh's reception was cordial from the very first. The great bulls of
the herd stood still and lifted their ears when they heard him grunting
up the hill. But he slipped among them and was forgotten at once. They
had no dealings with the princes of Malay and Siam, and his
light-coloured coat meant nothing whatever to them. If they did any
thinking about him at all, it was just to wonder why a calf with all the
evident marks of a nine-year-old should be so tall and weigh so much.

One can fancy that the great old wrinkled tusker that led the herd
peered at him now and then out of his little red eyes and wondered. A
herd-leader begins to think about future contestants for his place as
soon as he acquires the leadership. But _Hai!_ This little one would not
have his greatest strength for fifteen years.

It was a compact, medium-sized herd--vast males, mothers, old-maid
elephants, long-legged and ungainly, young males just learning their
strength and proud of it beyond words, and many calves. They ranged all
the way in size from the great leader, who stood ten feet and weighed
nearly nine thousand pounds, to little two-hundred-and-fifty-pound
babies that had been born that season. And before long the entire herd