e rhinoceros, the elephant, the bison, and the hamadryad, that
great and terrible snake which can, and does, pursue and overtake a mounted
man, and which with a touch of its poisoned fang can slay the most powerful
brute. The huge Himalayan bear roams under the giant trees, feeding on
fruit and honey, yet ready to shatter unprovoked the skull of a poor
woodcutter. Those savage striped and spotted cats, the tiger and the
panther, steal through it on velvet paw and take toll of its harmless
denizens.

But, if I cannot describe it as I would, at least I have lived the life of
the wild in the spacious realm of the Terai. I would that I had the power
to make others feel what I have felt, the thrill that comes when facing the
onrush of the bloodthirstiest of all fierce brutes, a rogue elephant, or
the joy of seeing a charging tiger check and crumple up at the arresting
blow of a heavy bullet.

I have followed day after day from dawn to dark and fought again and again
a fierce outlaw tusker elephant that from sheer lust of slaughter had
killed men, women, and children and carried on for years a career of crime
unbelievable.

No one that knows the jungle well will refuse to credit the strangest story
of what wild animals will do. Of all the swarming herds of wild elephants
in the Terai, the Mysore, or the Ceylon jungles no man, white or black, has
ever seen one that had died a natural death. Yet many have watched them
climbing up the great mountain rampart of the Himalayas towards regions
where human foot never followed. The Death Place of the Elephants is a
legend in which all jungle races firmly believe, but no man has ever found
it. The mammoths live a century and a half--but the time comes when each of
them must die. Yet no human eye watches its death agony.

Those who know elephants best will most readily credit the strangest tales
of their doings. And there are men--white men--whose power over wild beasts
and wilder fellow men outstrips the novelist's imagination, the true tale
of whose doings no resident in a civilised land would believe.

GORDON CASSERLY.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I.--THE SECRET MISSION 3

II.--A ROGUE ELEPHANT 20

III.--A GIRL OF THE TERAI 35

IV.--THE MADNESS OF BADSHAH 59

V.--THE DEATH-PLACE 79

VI.--A DRAMATIC INTRODUCTION 95