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And the mahouts sat on the necks of their elephants, just back of the heads, and each mahout had an elephant-goad, something like an ox-goad, only that it was shorter and the end that was sharp was bent around so that it was something like the claws of a hammer, but the claws were sharp.
The rope spun tight, hummed, and snapped very softly indeed. Then he padded in silence out among the huts, and nobody who had not seen him do it would believe how silently an elephant can move when he sees fit. There was no thick jungle here just soft grass, huts, approaching dark fringe that was jungle. None of the mahouts was awake to see him. No voice called him back.
While the mahouts in front rained a shower of blows on the elephants head, and the spear-men pricked him up from behind with their jhethas, the occupant of the pad, turning round with his face to the tail, belaboured the poor hathee with the auctioneer's hammer. The blows rattled on the elephant's rump.
When their mahouts heard from Gul Dad the story of the tiger's death they exclaimed in amazement and admiration: "Ahré, Chai! She will be the death of many tigers, indeed," they said. Then each in turn brought his elephant up to the prostrate animal and made her smell and strike it with her trunk in order to inspire her with contempt for tigers.
This was successful, as shortly afterwards we heard the shouts of the mahouts on the scouting elephants, who reported that the tiger had gone away at great speed across the intervening ground towards the original retreat.
He was not inclined to take the special arm-chair assigned to him, but walked about, speaking to his guests, not omitting the boys, to whom he appeared to have taken a fancy. His Highness gave a signal, at which the mahouts took their places on the necks of the big beasts, and the chains which secured the combatants were cast off.
And I have seen the same sort of thing happen a dozen times, so we must choose a couple of steady ones, anyhow, for the ladies." For the next hour they strolled about outside. The Doctor cross questioned the mahouts and told off the elephants for the party; then there was a talk with the native shikaris and arrangements made for the beat, and at an early hour all retired to rest.
You'll find it more than interesting." "I'm very grateful to you," Skag answered. "I've had a promise of something and I mean to know more about the mahouts and about elephants." It was well on in the night when the elephants turned down out of the great highway into their own stockades.
A tiger being thus located by his "kill," the long line of beating elephants, riderless except for their mahouts, goes crashing through the burnt-up jungle-growth, until a trumpeting from one of the elephants announces the neighbourhood of "stripes," for an elephant has an abnormally keen sense of smell.
It is a curious fact that the elephants never seem to think of uncurling their trunks, and sweeping their persecutors from the backs of their tame brethren: this they have never been known to do, though it has not unfrequently occurred that a wild herd have proved more than a match for the tame one, and then there is nothing for it but to turn and make off in an ignominious retreat as fast as the blows of the mahouts can urge them.
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