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Updated: June 6, 2025
But knives did not matter now. Langur Dass had only his own faith and his own creed, and no fear could make him betray them. Muztagh had lost control of his herd. At their head ran the old leader that he had worsted. In their hour of fear they had turned back to him. What did this youngster know of elephant-drives?
"We did not feed you to-night for pity on your grey hairs. And remember a gipsy died in a tiger's claws on this very slope not six months past." Langur Dass was left alone with his thoughts. Soon he got up and stole out into the velvet darkness. The mists were over the hills as always. "Have I followed the tales of your greatness all these years for this?" he muttered.
His mother was not taken on the elephant drives into the jungles, so he never got a taste of this exciting sport. Mostly she was kept chained in the lines, and every day Langur Dass, the low-caste hillman in Dugan's employ, grubbed grass for her in the valleys.
"Shalt thou never lie the day long in the cool mud, little one? Never see a storm break on the hills? Nor feel a warm rain dripping through the branches? Or are these matters part of thee that none may steal?" Langur Dass would ask him, contented to wait a very long time for his answer.
They called him Langur after a grey-bearded breed of monkeys along the slopes of the Himalayas, rather suspecting he was cursed with evil spirits, for why should any sane man have such mad ideas as to the rights of elephants? He never wanted to join in the drives which was a strange thing indeed for a man raised in the hills.
And being only a beast, he did not know anything about the caste and prejudices of the men he saw, but he did know that one of them, the low-caste Langur Dass, ragged and dirty and despised, wakened a responsive chord in his lonely heart. They would have long talks together, that is, Langur would talk and Muztagh would mumble.
It was noticeable that Langur Dass, at the edge of the circle, pricked up his ears. "Do you mean the white elephant of which the Manipur people tell so many lies?" he asked. "Do you, skilled catchers that you are, believe that such an elephant is still wild in the jungle?" Ahmad Din scowled. "The Manipur people tell of him, but for once they tell the truth," was the reply.
The question was, therefore, submitted to a learned member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, M. Littre, in fact, whose Dictionnaire etymologique de la Langur Francaise is consulted with respect by the whole literary world, and to a young magistrate, M. Picot, to whom the Acacdemie des Sciences morales et politiques but lately assigned the first prize for his great work on the question it had propounded, as to the history and influence of states-general in France; and here are inserted, textually, the answers given by two gentlemen of so much enlightenment and authority upon such a subject.
Langur nodded. He was very adept indeed at keeping a closed mouth. It is one of the first lessons of the jungle. For another long hour they sat and perfected their plans. Then they lay down by the fire together, and sleep dropped over them one by one. At last Langur sat by the fire alone. "You will watch the flame to-night," Ahmad Din ordered.
Where is Langur Dass?" but instead of firebrands that would have frightened beast and aided men, Langur Dass stepped out from behind a tree and beat at the heads of the right-wing guards with a bamboo cane that whistled and whacked and scattered them into panic yelling all the while "Muztagh! O my Muztagh! Here is an opening! Muztagh, come!".
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