The sound broke the spell of horror and amazement that had held the crowd, and a confused babble arose, interspersed with a few wails and cries. One sharp shriek came from the curtained howdah of the bride. The Maharaja’s body guard at once galloped forward and formed a ring about the body. The crowd, to whom the elephant had gone “musth,” or mad, began to retreat and disperse.
Hawley, in a few words, told his cousin of what he has seen the mahout do, and his belief that the elephant’s action had thus been incited.
The two Englishmen went to the captain of the bodyguard, who was standing by the side of the fallen Maharaja. Krishna Singh lay quite dead, his neck broken by the fall. The captain, upon being informed of what Hawley had seen, directed some of his men to go in search of the mahout, who, in the confusion, had slipped from Raja’s neck, disappearing no one knew where. Their search was unsuccessful, nor did a further one, continued for over a week, reveal any trace of the elephant driver.
But several days afterward Hawley received a letter, bearing the Agra postmark. It was in a hand unfamiliar to him and was written in rather stiff, though perfectly correct English, such as an educated native would write. It was as follows:
To Hawley Sahib:
I am the man who stopped the Sahib’s horse near Agra one day, six years ago. Because I have seen in the Sahib’s eyes that he recognized and remembers me, I am writing this. He will then understand much that has puzzled him.
My father was Krishna Singh’s half-brother. Men who bore my father an enmity, invented evidence of a plot on his part to murder Krishna Singh and seize the throne. The Maharaja, bearing him little love and being of an intensely suspicious nature, required little proof to believe this, and caused my father and several others of the family to be seized and thrown into the palace dungeons. A few days later, without trial, they were led out and executed by the “Death of the Elephant.” Perchance the Sahib has not heard of this. The manner of it is thus: The condemned man is made to kneel with his head on a block of stone, and an elephant, at a command from the driver, places one of his feet on the prisoner’s head, killing him, of course, instantly.
I, who was but a youth at the time, by some inadvertence was allowed to escape, and made my way to Agra, where I remained several years with distant relatives, learning, in that time, to speak and write English I was intending to enter the service of the British Raj, when an idea of revenge on Krishna Singh, for my father’s death, suddenly sprang into full conception. I had long plotted, forming many impracticable and futile plans for vengeance, but the one that then occurred to me seemed possible, though extremely difficult. As the Sahib has seen, it proved successful.
I at once left Agra, disguising myself as a low-caste, and went to Burma, where I learned elephant-driving—a work not easy for one who has not been trained to it from boyhood. In doing this, I sacrificed my caste. In my thirst for revenge, however, it seemed but a little thing.
After four years in the jungle I came to Jizapur and, being a skilled and fully accredited mahout, was given a position in the Maharaja’s stables. Krishna Singh never suspected my identity, for I had changed greatly in the ten years since I had fled from Jizapur, and who would have thought to find Kshatriya in the position of such a low-caste elephant-driver?
Gradually, for my skill and trustworthiness, I was advanced in position, and at last was entrusted with the State elephant, Raja. This was what I had long been aiming at, for on my attaining the care of Krishna Singh’s own elephant depended the success or failure of my plan.
This position obtained, my purpose was but half-achieved. It was necessary that the elephant be trained for his part, and this, indeed, was perhaps the most difficult and dangerous pact of my work. It was not easy to avoid observation, and detection was likely to prove fatal to me and to my plan. On that day when the Sahib came upon me in the jungle, I thought my scheme doomed, and prepared to flee. But evidently no idea of the meaning of the performance in the jungle entered the Sahib’s mind.
At last came my day of revenge, and after the Maharaja’s death I succeeded in miraculously escaping, though I had fully expected to pay for my vengeance with my own life. I am safe now—not all the police and secret emissaries in India can find me.
The death that my father met has been visited upon his murderer, and the shadow of those dreadful days and of that unavenged crime has at last been lifted from my heart. I go forth
