_mahouts_ and coolies, who invariably gathered to witness
and wonder at his daily meeting with Badshah, he touched the elephant under
the ears with his toe and was borne away into the jungle.

His object this day was not to explore but to shoot a deer to replenish the
mess larder. Fresh meat was otherwise unprocurable in Ranga Duar; and an
unvaried diet of tinned food was apt to become wearisome, especially as it
was not helped out by bread and fresh vegetables. These were luxuries
unknown to the British officers in this, as in many other, outposts.

The sea of vegetation closed around Badshah and submerged him, as he turned
off a footpath and plunged into the dense undergrowth. The trees were
mostly straight-stemmed giants of teak, branchless for some distance from
the ground. Each strove to thrust its head above the others through the
leafy canopy overhead, fighting for its share of the life-giving sunlight.
In the green gloom below tangled masses of bushes, covered with large,
bell-shaped flowers and tall grasses in which lurked countless thorny
plants obstructed the view between the tree-trunks. Above and below was a
bewildering confusion of creepers forming an intricate network, swinging
from the upper branches and twisting around the boles, biting deep into the
bark, strangling the life out of the stoutest trees or holding up the
withered, lifeless trunks of others long dead. They filled the space
between the tree-tops and the undergrowth, entangled, crisscrossed,
festooned, like a petrified mass of writhing snakes.

Through this maddening obstacle Badshah forced his way; while Dermot hacked
at the impeding _lianas_ with a sharp _kukri_, the heavy-bladed Gurkha
knife. The elephant moved on at an easy pace, shouldering aside the surging
waves of vegetation and bursting the clinging hold of the creepers. As he
went he swept huge bunches of grass up in his trunk, tore down leafy trails
or broke off small branches, and crammed them all impartially into his
mouth. At a touch of Dermot's foot or the guiding pressure of his hand he
swerved aside to avoid a tree or a particularly thorny bush.

There was little life to be seen. But occasionally, with a whirring sound
of rushing wings, a bright-plumaged jungle cock with his attendant bevy of
sober-clad hens swept up with startled squawks from under the huge feet and
flew to perch high up on neighbouring trees, chattering and clucking
indignantly in their fright. The pretty