“He is afraid of me also,” said Little Toomai,standing up to his full height of four feet,with only one rag upon him. He was ten years old,the eldest son of Big Toomai, and, according to custom,he would take his father’s place on Kala Nag’s neck when he grew up,and would handle the heavy iron ankus,the elephant goad, that had been worn smooth by his father,and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather.
He knew what he was talking of;for he had been born under Kala Nag’s shadow,had played with the end of his trunk before he could walk,had taken him down to water as soon as he could walk,and Kala Nag would no more have dreamed of disobeying his shrill little orders than he would have dreamed of killing him on that day when Big Toomai carried the little brown baby under Kala Nag’s tusks, and told him to salute his master that was to be.
“Yes,” said Little Toomai, “he is afraid of me,” and he took long strides up to Kala Nag,called him a fat old pig,and made him lift up his feet one after the other.
“Wah!” said Little Toomai, “thou art a big elephant,” and he wagged his fluffy head, quoting his father.“The Government may pay for elephants,but they belong to us mahouts. When thou art old,Kala Nag, there will come some rich rajah,and he will buy thee from the Government,on account of thy size and thy manners,and then thou wilt have nothing to do but to carry gold earrings in thy ears,and a gold howdah on thy back,and a red cloth covered with gold on thy sides,and walk at the head of the processions of the King.Then I shall sit on thy neck, O Kala Nag,with a silver ankus,and men will run before us with golden sticks, crying,`Room for the King’s elephant!’ That will be good, Kala Nag,but not so good as this hunting in the jungles.”
“Umph!” said Big Toomai. “Thou art a boy,and as wild as a buffalo-calf.This running up and down among the hills is not the best Government service.I am getting old, and I do not love wild elephants.Give me brick elephant lines,one stall to each elephant,and big stumps to tie them to safely, and flat,broad roads to exercise upon,instead of this come-and-go camping. Aha,the Cawnpore barracks were good.There was a bazaar close by,and only three hours’ work a day.”
Little Toomai remembered the Cawnpore elephant-lines and said nothing.He very much preferred the camp life,and hated those broad, flat roads,with the daily grubbing for grass in the forage reserve,and the long hours when there was nothing to do except to watch Kala Nag fidgeting in his pickets.
What Little Toomai liked was to scramble up bridle paths that only an elephant could take; the dip into the valley below; the glimpses of the wild elephants browsing miles away; the rush of the frightened pig and peacock under Kala Nag’s feet; the blinding warm rains, when all the hills and valleys smoked; the beautiful misty mornings when nobody knew where they would camp that night; the steady, cautious drive of the wild elephants, and the mad rush and blaze and hullabaloo of the last night’s drive, when the elephants poured into the stockade like boulders in a landslide, found that they could not get out, and flung themselves at the heavy posts only to be driven back by yells and flaring torches and volleys of blank cartridge.
Even a little boy could be of use there,and Toomai was as useful as three boys.He would get his torch and wave it,and yell with the best.But the really good time came when the driving out began,and the Keddah--that is,the stockade--looked like a picture of the end of the world,and men had to make signs to one another,because they could not hear themselves speak.Then Little Toomai would climb up to the top of one of the quivering stockade posts, his sun-bleached brown hair flying loose all over his shoulders, and he looking like a goblin in the torch-light. And as soon as there was a lull you could hear his high-pitched yells of encouragement to Kala Nag, above the trumpeting and crashing, and snapping of ropes, and groans of the tethered elephants. “Mael, mael, Kala Nag!(Go on, go on, Black Snake!) Dant do!(Give him the tusk!) Somalo!Somalo!(Careful, careful!) Maro!Mar!(Hit him, hit him!) Mind the post!Arre!Arre!Hai!Yai!Kya-a-ah!” he would shout, and the big fight between Kala Nag and the wild elephant would sway to and fro across the Keddah, and the old elephant catchers would wipe the sweat out of their eyes, and find time to nod to Little Toomai wriggling with joy on the top of the posts.
He did more than wriggle.One night he slid down from the post and slipped in between the elephants and threw up the loose end of a rope, which had dropped, to a driver who was trying to get a purchase on the leg of a kicking young calf (calves always give more trouble than full-grown animals). Kala Nag saw him, caught him in his trunk, and handed him up to Big Toomai, who slapped him then and there, and put him back on the post.
Next morning he gave him a scolding and said,“Are not good brick elephant lines and a little tent carrying enough,that thou must needs go elephant catching on thy own account, little worthless?Now those foolish hunters,whose pay is less than my pay,have spoken to Petersen Sahib of the matter.” Little Toomai was frightened.He did not know much of white men,but Petersen Sahib was the greatest white man in the world to him.He was the head of all the Keddah operations--the man who caught all the elephants for the Government of India, and who knew more about the ways of elephants than any living man.
“What--what will happen?” said Little Toomai.