One by one the mahouts and coolies stole from the shelter of the trees and gathered together.

“Wah!  Wah! the sahib has gone mad, too,” exclaimed an old Mohammedan.

“He will never return alive,” said another, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Afsos hun (I am sorry), for he was a good sahib.  The shaitan (devil) has borne him away to Eblis (hell).”

Here Ramnath broke in indignantly: 

“My elephant is no shaitan.  He is Gunesh, the god Gunesh himself.  He will let no harm come to the sahib, who is safe under his protection.”

The other Hindus among the elephant attendants nodded agreement.

“Such bath (true words),” they said.  “Who knows what the gods purpose?  Which of you has ever before seen any man stop a dhantwallah (tusker) when the madness was upon him?  Which of ye has known a white man to have a power that even we have not, we whose fathers, whose forefathers for generations, have tended elephants?”

“Ye speak true talk,” said the first speaker.  “The Prophet tells us there are no gods.  But afrits there are, djinns—­beings more than man.  What know we of those with whom the sahib communes when he and Badshah go forth alone into the forest?”

“The sahib is not as other sahibs,” broke in an old coolie.  “I was with him before—­in Buxa Duar.  There is naught in the jungle that can puzzle him.  He knows its ways, the speech of the men in it—­ay, and of its animals, too.  He was a great shikari (hunter) in those old days.  Many beasts have fallen to his gun.  Yet now he goes forth for days and brings back no heads.  What does he?”

“For days, say you, Chotu?” queried another mahout.  “Ay, for more than days.  For nights.  What man among us, what man even of these wild men around us, would willingly pass a night in the forest?”

“True talk,” agreed the old Mohammedan.  “Which of us would care to lie down alone beside his elephant in the jungle all night?  Yet the sahib sleeps there—­if he does sleep—­without fear.  And no harm comes to him.”

Ramnath slowly shook his head.

“The sahib does not sleep.  Nor is there aught in the forest that can do him harm.  Or my elephant either.  The budmash tried to kill the sahib, and Badshah protected him.  When the big snake attacked Badshah, the sahib saved him.

“But what do they in the forest?” asked Chotu again.  “Tell me that, Ramnath-ji.”

Once more Ramnath shook his head.

“What know we?  We are black men.  What knowledge have we of what the sahibs do, of what they can do?  They go under the sea in ships, beneath the land in carriages.  So say the sepoys who have been to Vilayet (Europe).  They fly in the air like birds.  That have I seen with my own eyes at Delhi——­”

“And I at Lahore,” broke in the old Mohammedan.