The man understood at once.  In the elephants, as well as in all other breeds, an albino is sometimes born.  A perfectly white elephant, up to a few years ago, had never been seen, but on rare occasions elephants are born with light-coloured or clouded hides.  Such creatures are bought at fabulous prices by the Malay and Siamese princes, to whom a white elephant is the greatest treasure that a king can possess.

Muztagh was a long way from being an albino, yet a tendency in that direction had bleached his hide.  And the man knew that on the morrow Dugan Sahib would pay him a lifetime’s earnings for the little wabbly calf, whose welcome had been the wild cries of the tuskers in the jungle.

II

Little Muztagh (which means White Mountain in an ancient tongue) did not enjoy his babyhood at all.  He was born with the memory of jungle kingdoms, and the life in the elephant lines almost killed him with dulness.

There was never anything to do but nurse of the strong elephant milk and roam about in the keddah or along the lines.  He had been bought the second day of his life by Dugan Sahib, and the great white heaven-born saw to it that he underwent none of the risks that are the happy fate of most baby elephants.  His mother was not taken on the elephant drives into the jungles, so he never got a taste of this exciting sport.  Mostly she was kept chained in the lines, and every day Langur Dass, the low-caste hillman in Dugan’s employ, grubbed grass for her in the valleys.  All night long, except the regular four hours of sleep, he would hear her grumble and rumble and mutter discontent that her little son shared with her.

Muztagh’s second year was little better.  Of course he had reached the age where he could eat such dainties as grass and young sugar-cane, but these things could not make up for the fun he was missing in the hills.  He would stand long hours watching their purple tops against the skies, and his little dark eyes would glow.  He would see the storms break and flash above them, behold the rains lash down through the jungles, and he was always filled with strange longings and desires that he was too young to understand or to follow.  He would see the white haze steam up from the labyrinth of wet vines, and he would tingle and scratch for the feel of its wetness on his skin.  And often, when the mysterious Burman night came down, it seemed to him that he would go mad.  He would hear the wild tuskers trumpeting in the jungles a very long way off, and all the myriad noises of the mysterious night, and at such times even his mother looked at him with wonder.

“Oh, little restless one,” Langur Dass would say, “thou and that old cow thy mother and I have one heart between us.  We know the burning—­we understand, we three!”