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The stag was a fine beast fourteen hands high, with sharp brow antlers and a pair of thick, stunted horns branching at the ends into two points. Leaving the elephants to graze freely the mahout and his coolie disembowelled the sambhur and hacked off the head with their heavy kukris.
These men, perched as they are on the elephant's neck, carry their lives in their hand, for should the tiger be wounded only, he will certainly make a spring for the elephant's head, and then the mahout is a dead man. Incidentally the "gun" in the howdah will not fare much better in that case.
Moolah Bux was a thoroughly dependable elephant, but although moving forward with a majestic and determined step, it was in vain that I endeavoured to hurry the mahout; both man and beast appeared to understand their business thoroughly, but to my ideas the pace was woefully slow if assistance was required in danger.
The fleetness of the horse and the skill of his rider kept the latter out of harm's way till the elephant seemed to be exhausted. The Americans thought he had done enough for one day, and the horseman retired. The great beast which had borne the brunt of three combats was allowed to cool off, and then his mahout conducted him to the rest he had bravely won.
Telling him to fall back, my two dependable elephants took their places upon the right and left. My mahout advised me not to advance, but to fire a shot into the supposed position, which he declared would either kill the tiger or drive it forward.
Ohe, mahout with a mud head, the elephant for the Sahib, and tell them on the far side that there will be no crossing after daylight. Money? Nay, Sahib. I am not of that kind. No, not even to give sweetmeats to the baby-folk. My house, look you, is empty, and I am an old man. Dutt, Ram Pershad! Dutt! Dutt! Dutt! Good luck go with you, Sahib.
But, while the rebuked mahout glared malevolently and inwardly hoped that the animal might kill him, Dermot walked calmly toward it, holding out his hand with the fruit. The elephant, regarding him nervously and suspiciously out of its little eyes, shifted uneasily from foot to foot, and at first shrank from him.
About 15 yards from this bloody witness we saw the unfortunate mahout lying apparently lifeless in the grass. We immediately carried him to the river and bathed him in cool water. He had been seized by the shoulder, and was terribly torn and clawed about the head and neck, but fortunately there were no deep wounds about the cavity of the chest.
"You might or you might not; I could not wait to think about that; the tiger had struck its claws into the mahout's leg, and would have had him off the elephant in another moment. That is a first rate animal you were riding on, or he would have turned and bolted; if he had done so you and the mahout would have both been off to a certainty."
The wife of a mahout, or elephant driver, was frequently in the habit of giving her baby in charge of an elephant. The child would begin, as soon as it was left to itself, to crawl about, getting sometimes under the elephant's huge legs, at others becoming entangled among the branches on which he was feeding.
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