e caresses.

None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had
vagabonded along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his
own caste and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted past all
knowledge of the lapse of time.

The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa.
Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung
clear, looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away,
as one having business elsewhere.

'Hi! ho! Come back you,' shouted Chihun. 'Come back, and put me on
your neck, Misborn Mountain. Return, Splendour of the Hillsides.
Adornment of all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe off your fat
forefoot!'

Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with
a rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun
knew what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high
words.

'None of your nonsense with me,' said he. 'To your pickets,
Devil-son.'

'Hrrump!' said Moti Guj, and that was all--that and the forebent
ears.

Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a
toothpick, and strolled about the clearing, making jest of the other
elephants, who had just set to work.

Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out
with a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man
the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the
clearing and 'Hrrumphing' him into the verandah. Then he stood
outside the house chuckling to himself, and shaking all over with the
fun of it, as an elephant will.

'We'll thrash him,' said the planter. 'He shall have the finest
thrashing that ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve
foot of chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty blows.'

Kala Nag--which means Black Snake--and Nazim were two of the biggest
elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer the
graver punishments, since no man can beat an elephant properly.

They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as
they sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti
Guj had never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped,
and he did not intend to open new experiences. So he waited, weaving
his head from right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala
Nag's fat side where a blunt tusk would sink deepest. Kala Nag had no
tusks; the chain was his badge of authority;