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Updated: April 30, 2025
On Christmas Day Badshah, his neck encircled with a garland of flowers procured from the Plains, was led up solemnly by his seldom-seen mahout to present Colonel Dermot with a gilded lime and receive in return a present of silver rupees which passed into the possession of the said mahout.
He looked up and down the bank, and on the opposite bank, but could see no traces of the tiger. Looking down, he saw in the water what at first he took to be a large bull-frog. There was not a ripple on the placid stagnant surface of the pool. He marvelled much, and just then his mahout pointed to the supposed bull-frog, and in an excited whisper implored George to fire.
He is seized with the male-madness. They have penned him in the stone-walled enclosure yonder. He killed his mahout this morning." "Killed Ebrahim? Curse him! If he had not cost me twenty thousand rupees I would have him shot," growled the Rajah savagely. "Killed Ebrahim, my best mahout? Why could he not have slain this accursed Feringhi if he had the blood-lust on him?"
Splendidly done!" he cried. "You saved me from being lugged bodily out of the howdah or at least from being mauled. This lever jammed and I couldn't re-load." Her eyes shining and face beaming with excitement she shook his hand. "Wasn't it thrilling? I thought he'd have got both of us." Then to the mahout she continued in Urdu, "Gul Dad, are you hurt?"
It was rapidly getting dark, and the mahout, or elephant driver, a miserable low caste stupid fellow, evidently knew nothing of the country, and was going at random. I halted at the next village, got hold of the chowkeydar, and by a promise of backsheesh, prevailed on him to accompany us and show us the way.
Near the port we met three elephants, the centre one of great size, rolling along, one of them with a mahout seated behind his great flapping ears. These are part of the regalia of the deposed Sultan, and were sent down from the interior for me and my baggage. The smallest of them would have carried me and my "Gladstone bag" and canvas roll.
Smiling, Ahmed set her in the howdah, and the mahout bade the elephant to rise, but, interested in some orders by Ahmed, left the beast to his own devices. The child called and the elephant walked off quietly. So long as he remained within range of vision no one paid any attention to him. Finally he passed under a tree near the cages and reached up for some leaves.
And then, looking about him first at one and then at another until he had bestowed a glance upon the other five great beasts, he turned once more to what proved to be the Rajah's special mount, and then spoke again to the little mahout. "He is a beauty," he said; and once more his looks conveyed to the driver the admiration he felt.
The natives tied the legs together, placed long bamboos between them, and carried the animals off, in triumph, to the camp. The elephant on which Charlie had ridden ran some distance, before the mahout could stop him. He was, indeed, so terrified by the onslaught of the tiger, that it was not considered advisable to endeavour to get him to face another, that day.
The second elephant's mahout, a grey-bearded Mahommedan, slipped instantly to the earth and, drawing his kukri, struggled through the arresting creepers and undergrowth to where the stag lay feebly moving its limbs. Seizing one horn he performed the hallal, that is, he cut its throat to let blood while there was still life in the animal, muttering the short Mussulman creed as he did so.
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