siness!" King assured him. "I wish to
ride to _her_ palace."

"By _her_ leave?"

"By the gods' leave."

"Will the gods pay me?"

"Doubtless. But she will pay first--setting the gods a good example."

The native of India finds it perfectly convenient to ride on a six-inch
plank, slung more or less like a house-painter's platform against an
elephant's bulging ribs, and it does not seem to make much difference to
him when more weight is on one side than on the other. But King and I
had to stand and hold each other's hands across the pad; and even so we
were by no means too secure, for Akbar resented being taken away from
the herd and behaved like a mutinous earthquake.

It was not so far to the city by road, because the river wound a good
deal and the road cut straight from point to point. But it was several
miles, and we covered it at pretty nearly the speed of a railroad train.

In spite of his rage, Akbar had perfect control of himself. Having
missed about half his morning swim, and the herd's society, he proposed
to miss nothing else, and there was not one cart, one _ekka_, one
piled-up load in all those miles that he did not hit and do his utmost
to destroy. There was not one yellow dog that he did not give chase to
and try to trample on.

He stopped to pull the thatch from the roof of a little house beside the
road, but as the plying _ankus_ made his head ache he couldn't stay long
enough to finish that job but scooted uproad again in full pursuit of a
Ford car, while an angry man shoved his head through the hole in the
roof of the house and cursed all the rumps of all the elephants,
together with the forebears and descendants of their owners and their
wives.

It seemed that Akbar was fairly well-known thereabouts. The men in the
Ford car shouted the news in advance of his coming, and the road into
the city began to look like the track of a routed army. Every man and
animal took to his heels, and Akbar trumpeted wild hurrahs as he
strained all tendons in pursuit. He needed no second wind, because he
never lost his first, but he took the whole course as far as the city
gate at a speed that would have satisfied Jehu, son of Nimshi, who, the
Bible says, made Israel to sin.

That particular city gate consisted of an arch, covered with carvings of
outrageous-looking gods, and as a picture display it was perfect, but as
an entrance to a crowded city it possessed no virtue. It was so narrow
that only one vehicl