and through thick undergrowth of high, tangled bushes that
clothed the foothills. Up this path, as a paling in the east betokened the
dawn, the long line of elephants climbed in the same order of march as on
the previous day. Badshah led; and behind him followed the oldest
elephants, on which the steep ascent told heavily.

Two thousand feet above the forest the track led close to a Bhuttia
village. As the rising sun streaked the sky with rose, the head of the long
line neared the scattered bamboo huts perched on piles on the steep slopes.
The track was not visible from the village, but a party of wood-cutters
from the hamlet had just reached it on their way to descend to their day's
work in the jungle below. They saw the winding file of ascending elephants
some distance beneath them and in great alarm climbed up a big rubber tree
growing close to the path. Hidden among its broad and glossy green leaves
they watched the approaching elephants.

From their elevated perch they had a good view of the serpentining line.
To their amazement they saw that a white man sat astride the neck of the
first animal and was apparently conducting the enormous herd. One of the
wood-cutters recognised Dermot, who had once visited this very village
and interrogated this man among others. Petrified with fright, the
Bhuttia and his companions watched the long line go by, and for fully an
hour after the last elephant had disappeared they did not venture to
descend from the tree.

When at last they did so there was no longer any thought of work. Instead,
they fled hotfoot to the village to spread their strange news; and next
day, when they went to their work below and explained to the enraged Gurkha
overseer the reason of their absence on the previous day, they told him the
full tale. No story is too incredible for the average native of India, and
the overseer and various forest guards who also heard the narrative fully
believed it and spread it through the jungle villages. It grew as it passed
from tongue to tongue, until the story finally rivalled the most marvellous
of the exploits of Krishna, that wonderful Hindu god.

Meanwhile Dermot and his mammoth companions were climbing steadily higher
and ever higher into the mountains. A panther, disturbed by them in his
sleep beside the bones of a goat, rose growling from the ground and slunk
sullenly away. A pair of brilliantly-plumaged hornbills flew overhead with
a loud and measured beat of wi