This I did very reverently and we walked back to the temple almost in silence.

That month of rest, or rather the last three weeks of it, since for the first few days after the battle I was quite prostrate, I occupied in various ways, amongst others in a journey with Harut to Simba Town.  This we made after our spies had assured us that the Black Kendah were really gone somewhere to the south-west, in which direction fertile and unoccupied lands were said to exist about three hundred miles away.  It was with very strange feelings that I retraced our road and looked once more upon that wind-bent tree still scored with the marks of Jana’s huge tusk, in the boughs of which Hans and I had taken refuge from the monster’s fury.  Crossing the river, quite low now, I travelled up the slope down which we raced for our lives and came to the melancholy lake and the cemetery of dead elephants.

Here all was unchanged.  There was the little mount worn by his feet, on which Jana was wont to stand.  There were the rocks behind which I had tried to hide, and near to them some crushed human bones which I knew to be those of the unfortunate Marut.  These we buried with due reverence on the spot where he had fallen, I meanwhile thanking God that my own bones were not being interred at their side, as but for Hans would have been the case—­if they were ever interred at all.  All about lay the skeletons of dead elephants, and from among these we collected as much of the best ivory as we could carry, namely about fifty camel loads.  Of course there was much more, but a great deal of the stuff had been exposed for so long to sun and weather that it was almost worthless.

Having sent this ivory back to the Town of the Child, which was being rebuilt after a fashion, we went on to Simba Town through the forest, dispatching pickets ahead of us to search and make sure that it was empty.  Empty it was indeed; never did I see such a place of desolation.

The Black Kendah had left it just as it stood, except for a pile of corpses which lay around and over the altar in the market-place, where the three poor camelmen were sacrificed to Jana, doubtless those of wounded men who had died during or after the retreat.  The doors of the houses stood open, many domestic articles, such as great jars resembling that which had been set over the head of the dead man whom we were commanded to restore life, and other furniture lay about because they could not be carried away.  So did a great quantity of spears and various weapons of war, whose owners being killed would never want them again.  Except a few starved dogs and jackals no living creature remained in the town.  It was in its own way as waste and even more impressive than the graveyard of elephants by the lonely lake.

“The curse of the Child worked well,” said Harut to me grimly.  “First, the storm; the hunger; then the battle; and now the misery of flight and ruin.”