is tread
in the deepening centre, swing down with the current an instant and
then strike his balance, swimming. Here was coolness and silence.
To-night he would know. To-night, if he did not have Carlin--

. . . Gunpat Rao stood shoulder-deep in the stream. Skag fancied a
gleam of deep massive humour under the tilt of the great ear below him,
as the elephant, none too delicately, set his foot forward into the
deeper part of the stream. His trunk and Chakkra's voice were raised
together--for Chakkra was slipping:

"Hai, my Prince, would you go without me? Would you leave the Sahib
alone in his proving-time? Would you leave my children
fatherless? . . . There is none other--"

They stood in the lifting day overlooking a broad sloping country--the
Vindha peaks faintly outlined in the far distance.

"It is the broad valley of Nerbudda," Chakkra said, "full of milk and
wine against the seasons. One good day of travel ahead to the bank of
Holy Nerbudda, Sahib, before the fall of night--if the chase holds so
long."

Skag did not eat this day. It was not until high noon that they halted
by a spring of sweet water, and the American thought of his thirst.
Nels was leaner. He plunged to the water; then back to the scent again
with a far challenge call. (It was like the echo of his challenge to
the cheetah as the wall of the waters loomed across the hills, above
Poona.) On he went, seriously; his mouth open in the great heat, his
tongue rocking on its centre like nothing else.

Gunpat Rao seemed gradually overcoming obstructions; as if his great
idea mounted and cleared, his body requiring time to strike its rhythm.
Chakkra sang to him. The sun became hotter and higher--until it hung
at the very top of the universe and forgot nothing. There was a
stillness in the hills that would frighten anything but a fever bird to
silence. To Skag it was a weight against speech and he sat rigidly for
many moments at a time--all his life of forest and city, of man and
creature, passing before his tortured eyes. . . . And the words Carlin
had spoken; all the mysteries of his nights near Poona when she had
seemed to draw near as he fell asleep--seemed to be there as he came
forth from a dream. Always he had thought he could never forget the
dreams--only to find them gone utterly, before he stood upon his feet.
Past all, was the marvel of the hunting cheetah day, when he looked at
the beast that gave no answer to his force;