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Having watched all this, I then got up on Kari's back and whistled to the monkey. He leaped down from the tree onto my shoulder. The elephant shivered for a moment and then was absolutely still. When I ordered him "mali," he walked on. One day I took them to the bazaar, I on the elephant and the monkey on my shoulder.
In a few seconds both of us had turned over I do not know how and were lying on our faces, holding on to the cords that held the mattress to Kari's back, while he broke into a run. Trees bent and broke, branches fell, and we could hear the monkeys stampeding from tree to tree, and flocks of birds, startled out of their sleep, falling upon us, their wings beating our faces.
But this was not Kari's mind, which was set fiercely upon winning back to his own country that he believed to lie towards the south. Day by day we sat there regaining our strength upon the good food of that valley, and staring first at the desert to the south, then at the precipices on our left hand, and lastly at the ocean upon our right.
I stared at him, unable to open my mouth from amazement, so it was he who spoke the first, saying, in a voice that had a note of triumph in it: "Did I not tell you that the gods were with us? Where is your faith, O White Man! Look! They have brought me back to the land of which I am Prince." Now there was that in Kari's tone which in my weak state angered me. Why did he scold me about faith?
That instant the wild elephant let go of his trunk and leapt to cut Kari's trunk with his tusks, but before he could do that, Kari struck him on the head and he went reeling into the distance. He would have fallen if he had not struck against a tree, and if an elephant falls, that is the end of the battle.
From him I learned that he was a messenger from Larico to Urco. Believing that our defeat was almost certain, Larico had sent him to make his peace with Urco by betraying all Kari's and my own plans to him and revealing how he might most easily destroy us.
That shows that Kari's ancestors were undoubtedly very gentle elephants. After killing some more birds, the magistrate became quite convinced that Kari would do for the hunt, so one morning about four o'clock we started out.
I glanced at Kari's face; it was as that of a stone statue on a tomb, only in it his large eyes shone, noting all things and, as I imagined in my distraught fancy, filled with triumph and foreknowledge.
Budja, however, objected to move until a report of Kari's murder had been forwarded to the king, lest the people, getting bumptious, should try the same trick again; and Kasoro said he would not go up the river, as he had received no orders to do so.
The eldest of these was an able and beautiful prince named Kari, but we quarrelled, and to tell the truth there was a woman in the matter, or rather two women, for Kari's mother fought with Urco's mother whom I loved, because she never scolded me, which the other did. So Urco was named to be Inca after me.
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