The elephants fed continually as they moved along.  Sweeping up great bunches of grass, tearing down trails of leafy creepers, breaking off branches from the trees, they crammed them all impartially into their mouths.  Picking up twigs in their trunks they used them to beat their sides and legs to drive off stinging insects or, snuffing up dust from the ground, blew clouds of it along their bellies for the same purpose.

Suddenly the Colonel stopped Badshah and whispered: 

“There’s a sambhur stag, Wargrave.  There, to your left in the undergrowth.  Have a shot at him.”

The subaltern looked everywhere eagerly, but in the dense tangle could not discern the animal.  Like all novices in the jungle he directed his gaze too far away; and suddenly a dark patch of deep shadow in the undergrowth close by materialised itself into the black hide of a stag only as it dashed off.  It had been standing within fifteen paces of the elephants, knowing the value of immobility as a shield.  At last its nerve failed it; and it revealed itself by breaking away.  But as it fled Colonel Dermot’s rifle spoke; and the big deer crumpled up and fell crashing through the vegetation to the ground.  The second elephant’s mahout, a grey-bearded Mahommedan, slipped instantly to the earth and, drawing his kukri, struggled through the arresting creepers and undergrowth to where the stag lay feebly moving its limbs.  Seizing one horn he performed the hallal, that is, he cut its throat to let blood while there was still life in the animal, muttering the short Mussulman creed as he did so.  For his religion enjoins this hygienic practice—­borrowed by the Prophet from the Mosaic law—­to guard against long-dead carrion being eaten.  At the touch of the Colonel’s hand Badshah sank to its knees; and Wargrave, very annoyed with himself for his slowness in detecting the deer, forced his way through the undergrowth to examine it.  The stag was a fine beast fourteen hands high, with sharp brow antlers and a pair of thick, stunted horns branching at the ends into two points.

Leaving the elephants to graze freely the mahout and his coolie disembowelled the sambhur and hacked off the head with their heavy kukris.  Aided by the Political Officer and Wargrave they skinned the animal and then with the skill of professional butchers proceeded to cut up the carcase into huge joints.  While they were thus engaged the Colonel went to a small, straight-stemmed tree common in the jungle and, clearing away a patch of the outer mottled bark, disclosed a white inner skin, which he cut off in long strips.  With these, which formed unbreakable cordage, they fastened the heavy joints to the pad of the transport elephant.

When this was done Wargrave, looking at his hands covered with blood and grime, said ruefully: 

“How on earth are we to get clean, sir?  Is there any water in the jungle?  We haven’t seen any.”