but he judged it good to
swing wide of Moti Guj at the last minute, and seem to appear as if
he had brought out the chain for amusement. Nazim turned round and
went home early. He did not feel fighting-fit that morning, and so
Moti Guj was left standing alone with his ears cocked.

That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back
to his inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work, and
is not tied up, is not quite so manageable as an eighty-one ton gun
loose in a heavy sea-way. He slapped old friends on the back and
asked them if the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense
concerning labour and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long
'nooning'; and wandering to and fro, thoroughly demoralised the
garden until sundown, when he returned to his pickets for food.

'If you won't work you shan't eat,' said Chihun angrily. 'You're a
wild elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your
jungle.'

Chihun's little brown baby, rolling on the floor of the hut,
stretched its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj
knew well that it was the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung
out his trunk with a fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby
threw itself shouting upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till
the brown baby was crowing in the air twelve feet above his father's
head.

'Great Chief!' said Chihun. 'Flour cakes of the best, twelve in
number, two feet across, and soaked in rum shall be yours on the
instant, and two hundred pounds' weight of fresh-cut young
sugar-cane therewith. Deign only to put down safely that
insignificant brat who is my heart and my life to me.'

Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet,
that could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun's hut, and waited
for his food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj
dozed, and thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the
elephant is that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else
that lives. Four or five hours in the night suffice--two just before
midnight, lying down on one side; two just after one o'clock, lying
down on the other. The rest of the silent hours are filled with
eating and fidgeting and long grumbling soliloquies.

At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a
thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in
the dark forest with none to look after him. So all th