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We can smell things a long way off, and when you are older you will get to know the difference between the sweet roots, under the ground, and the man- smell, which means danger. "Tusker smelled the man-smell, even though he could not see the white and black hunters, and then he trumpeted through his trunk to tell us all to run away," said Mrs. Stumptail.
We now heard a terrific bellowing at a short distance, which, in my ignorance, I thought proceeded from a huge tusker making a gallant resistance somewhere; I was rather disappointed, therefore, to find that the object of interest to a large group of men and elephants was only a young one struggling on his back in a deep hole into which he had fallen, and from which he was totally unable to extricate himself.
Still Tusker was a wise old elephant, and he knew, even in running from danger, that it was not well to go so fast that the smaller animals in the herd could not keep up. If he did that they would fall behind, and be caught or killed. So, every now and then the old elephant leader stopped a bit, and looked back.
They will have food to eat, and sweet water to drink, if they are quiet." Tusker heard this, and so did some of the other wild elephants. They were hungry and thirsty. "Will you give us water to drink?" asked Tusker, for his trunk and mouth were very dry. "You shall have water enough to swim in," answered one of the keonkies, or tame elephants. "And may we eat?"
He could not, indeed, avoid the shock altogether, but, yielding to it, he managed to keep his legs, turned short round, and fled past his big foe. Chand Moorut had no chance with the agile fellow in a race. He was soon left far behind, while the tusker charged onward. The matchlock-men tried in vain to check him. As he approached the line, the khedda elephants fled in all directions.
"No, I didn't see them," said Tusker himself, coming down from the hill just then. "But I smelled them, and that is the same thing. The wind was blowing from them to me, and I could smell them very plainly. Come now, elephants! Into the deep, dark part of the jungle, where the hunters can not find us, we will go far into the jungle."
So it was apparent that Badshah was not the only animal present that had escaped from captivity. The big tusker had probably belonged to the peelkhana of some rajah, judging by the pattern of the painted design. Slowly the seemingly endless line of great animals went by.
It is one thing to watch a big tusker doing his tricks in a circus tent, but quite another to hear him floundering through the woods, tearing off huge branches of trees as he moves along with what seems to be an incredible speed for so heavy an animal. There came the glad Sunday it was my thirteenth day at Dima when I heard the whistle of the steamboat.
He looked up in surprise as he heard the screams of his men and saw them running toward the gate. And then from around the corner of his tent loomed a huge bulk, and Tantor, the great tusker, towered above him. Malbihn's boy, feeling neither affection nor loyalty for his master, broke and ran at the first glimpse of the beast, and Malbihn was left alone and helpless.
Stumptail," said the kind, old head elephant. "You know the herd will never go faster than the mothers and baby elephants can travel." And this is true, as any old elephant hunter will tell you. "Thank you," said Mr. Stumptail, to Tusker; for elephants are polite to each other, even though, in the jungle, they sometimes may be a bit rough toward lions and tigers, of whom they are afraid.
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