“It is scarcely probable, though, that this mahout is the same,” Hawhey resumed, after a pause. “My rescuer was dressed as a high-caste, and it is not conceivable that such a one would turn elephant driver.”
“I know nothing of the man,” said Merton, as they rode on into the city. “He has been Raja’s mahout ever since I came here a year ago. Of course, as you say, he cannot be the man who stopped your horse. It is merely a chance resemblance.”
The next afternoon, Hawley was out riding alone. He had left the main toad for a smaller one running into the jungle, intending to visit a ruined temple of which Merton had told him. Suddenly he noticed elephant tracks in the dust, exceedingly large ones, which he concluded could have been made only by Raja. A momentary curiosity as to why the elephant had been ridden off into the jungle, and also concerning the mahout, led Hawley to follow the tracks when the road branched and they took the path opposite to the one that he had intended to follow. In a few minutes he came to a spot of open ground in the thick luxuriant jungle, and reined in quickly at what he saw there.
Raja stood in the clearing, holding something in his trunk which Hawley at first glance took to be a man, dressed in a blue and gold native attire, and with a red turban. Another look told him that it was merely a dummy—some old clothes stuffed with straw. As he watched, the mahout gave a low command, reinforced with a jab behind the ear from his ankus, or goad. Raja gave an upward swing with his trunk, and released his hold on the figure, which flew skyward for at least twenty feet, and then dropped limply to earth. The mahout watched its fall with an expression of what seemed to be malevolence upon his face, though Hawley might have been mistaken as to this at the distance. He gave another command, and a jab at the elephant’s cheek—a peculiar, quick thrust, at which Raja picked the dummy up and placed it on his back behind the mahout in the place usually occupied by the howdah The Hindu directing, the figure was again seized and hurled into the air.
Much mystified, Hawley watched several repetitions of this strange performance, but was unable to puzzle out what it meant. Finally, the mahout caught sight of him, and rode the elephant hastily away into the jungle on the opposite side of the clearing. Evidently he did not wish to be observed or questioned. Hawley continued his journey to the temple, thinking over the curious incident as he went. He did not see the mahout again that day.
He spoke of what he had seen to Merton that evening, but his cousin paid little attention to the tale, saying that no one could comprehend anything done by natives, and that it wasn’t worth while to wonder at their actions anyway. Even if one could find the explanation, it wouldn’t be worth knowing.
The scene in the jungle recurred to Hawley many times, probably because of the resemblance of the mahout to the man who had stopped his horse at Agra. But he could think of no plausible explanation of what he had seen. At last he dismissed the matter from his mind altogether.
At the time of Hawley’s visit, great preparations were being made for the marriage of the Maharaja of Jizapur, Krishna Singh, to the daughter of the neighboring sovereign. There was to be much feasting, firing of guns, and a gorgeous procession. All the Rajahs, Ranas, and Thakurs, etc., for a radius of at least hundred miles, were to be present. The spectacle, indeed, was one of the inducements that had drawn Hawley down into Central India.
After two weeks of unprecedented activity and excitement in the city of Jizapur, the great day came, with incessant thunder of guns from the Maharajab’s palace during all the forenoon, as the royalty of Central Indian arrived with its hordes of picturesque, tattered, dirty retainers and soldiery. Each king or dignitary was punctiliously saluted according to his rank, which in India is determined by the number of guns that may be fired in his honor.
At noon a great procession, the Maharaja heading it, issued from the palace to ride out and meet the bride and her father and attendants, who were to reach Jizapur at that hour.
Hawley and Merton watched the pageant from the large and many-colored crowd that lined the roadside without the city gates. As Raja, the great State elephant emerged, with Krishna Singh in the gold-embroidered howdah, or canopied seat, on his back, a rising cloud of dust in the distance proclaimed the coming of the bride and her relatives.
Behind the Maharaja came a number of elephants, bearing the nobles and dignitaries of Jizapur, and the neighboring princes. Then emerged richly caparisoned horses, with prismatically-attired riders—soldiers and attendants. Over this great glare of color and movement was the almost intolerable light of the midday Eastern sun.
The two Englishmen were some distance from the city gates, so that when the Maharaja’s slow, majestic procession passed them, that of the bridge was drawing near—a similar one, and less gorgeous only because it was smaller.
Perhaps fifty yards separated the two when something happened to bring both processesions to a halt. Hawley, who happened at the moment to be idly watching the elephant Raja, and his driver, saw the mahout reach swiftly forward and stab the animal’s cheek with his goad, precisely as he had done on that day in the jungle when Hawley had come unexpectedly upon him. Probably no one else noticed the action, or, if they did, attached any importance to it in the excitement that followed.
As he reached with his trunk for the dummy seated on his back, so Raja reached into the howdah and grasped Krishna Singh about the waist. In an
