back and climbed on to the elephant's neck. Badshah rose up and moved off,
and apparently the other elephants followed him, for the noises that had
filled the forest and showed them to be awake and feeding, ceased abruptly.
Dermot could just faintly distinguish the soft footfall of the animal
immediately behind him.

When Badshah reached the lowest hills and left the heavy forest behind the
sky became visible, filled with the clear and vivid tropic starlight. An
animal track led up between giant clumps of bamboos, by long-leaved
plantain trees and through thick undergrowth of high, tangled bushes that
clothed the foothills. Up this path, as a paling in the east betokened the
dawn, the long line of elephants climbed in the same order of march as on
the previous day. Badshah led; and behind him followed the oldest
elephants, on which the steep ascent told heavily.

Two thousand feet above the forest the track led close to a Bhuttia
village. As the rising sun streaked the sky with rose, the head of the long
line neared the scattered bamboo huts perched on piles on the steep slopes.
The track was not visible from the village, but a party of wood-cutters
from the hamlet had just reached it on their way to descend to their day's
work in the jungle below. They saw the winding file of ascending elephants
some distance beneath them and in great alarm climbed up a big rubber tree
growing close to the path. Hidden among its broad and glossy green leaves
they watched the approaching elephants.

From their elevated perch they had a good view of the serpentining line.
To their amazement they saw that a white man sat astride the neck of the
first animal and was apparently conducting the enormous herd. One of the
wood-cutters recognised Dermot, who had once visited this very village
and interrogated this man among others. Petrified with fright, the