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Updated: July 22, 2025
Kala Nag did not answer to the order by gurgling, as he usually did. He stood still, looking out across the moonlight, his head a little raised and his ears spread like fans, up to the great folds of the Garo hills. "Tend to him if he grows restless in the night," said Big Toomai to Little Toomai, and he went into the hut and slept.
Pudmini, thou hast seen him at the dance, and thou too, Kala Nag, my pearl among elephants! ahaa! Together! To Toomai of the Elephants. Barrao!" And at that last wild yell the whole line flung up their trunks till the tips touched their foreheads, and broke out into the full salute the crashing trumpet-peal that only the Viceroy of India hears, the Salaamut of the Keddah.
He was the head of all the Keddah operations the man who caught all the elephants for the Government of India, and who knew more about the ways of elephants than any living man. "What what will happen?" said Little Toomai. "Happen! The worst that can happen. Petersen Sahib is a madman. Else why should he go hunting these wild devils?
He was ten years old, the eldest son of Big Toomai, and, according to custom, he would take his father's place on Kala Nag's neck when he grew up, and would handle the heavy iron ankus, the elephant goad, that had been worn smooth by his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather.
"Must I never go there, Sahib?" asked Little Toomai with a big gasp. "Yes." Petersen Sahib smiled again. "When thou hast seen the elephants dance. That is the proper time. Come to me when thou hast seen the elephants dance, and then I will let thee go into all the Keddahs." There was another roar of laughter, for that is an old joke among elephant-catchers, and it means just never.
Now those foolish hunters, whose pay is less than my pay, have spoken to Petersen Sahib of the matter." Little Toomai was frightened. He did not know much of white men, but Petersen Sahib was the greatest white man in the world to him.
"Mael, mael, Kala Nag! Somalo! Mar! Arre! Arre! Hai! Yai! Kya-a-ah!" he would shout, and the big fight between Kala Nag and the wild elephant would sway to and fro across the Keddah, and the old elephant catchers would wipe the sweat out of their eyes, and find time to nod to Little Toomai wriggling with joy on the top of the posts. He did more than wriggle.
Little Toomai attended to Kala Nag's supper, and as evening fell, wandered through the camp, unspeakably happy, in search of a tom-tom. When an Indian child's heart is full, he does not run about and make a noise in an irregular fashion. He sits down to a sort of revel all by himself. And Little Toomai had been spoken to by Petersen Sahib!
Is the family of Toomai of the Elephants to be trodden underfoot in the dirt of a Keddah? Bad one! Wicked one! Worthless son! Go and wash Kala Nag and attend to his ears, and see that there are no thorns in his feet. Or else Petersen Sahib will surely catch thee and make thee a wild hunter a follower of elephant's foot tracks, a jungle bear. Bah! Shame! Go!"
Well, I will tell thee, for thou hast a cool head. They will dance, and it behooves thy father, who has swept all the hills of all the elephants, to double-chain his pickets to-night." "What talk is this?" said Big Toomai. "For forty years, father and son, we have tended elephants, and we have never heard such moonshine about dances."
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