[CHAPTER XL]
THE ELEPHANTS' CHACE
This, in the meantime, was what had been happening to Tom. When, having provided himself with tinned meats and a bottle of the powerful restorative which he had always on hand, he left the camp, he had turned, by what he spoke of afterwards as a happy instinct, into the track which Bâl Narîn had been following, before the strong impression of human neighbourhood and the eccentric movements of the three birds of prey had started him on his perilous journey across the belt of jungle that lay between the wild beasts' track and the hermit's hut.
He, too, was well-armed with light and weapons, and he went cautiously lest he should be taken by surprise. Suddenly the ping of Bâl Narîn's bullet aroused him. He waited until the echoes died away to make sure of the direction whence the sound had come, and then dashed into another track. He was in great doubt as to whether he was right, for there is nothing more confusing than the sound of firing in a wood. The detonations repeated again and again, and dashed, as it were, from one opposing substance to another, seem to come from a hundred points at once. Instead of approaching Bâl Narîn he might be putting immeasurable distance between them, while, on the other hand, it was quite possible that one of a company of robbers or fugitive sepoys had fired, in which case a deadly conflict would be before him.
The prudent course would have been to retreat while he could, to rouse his little camp, and to take the advice of those who knew more than he did about this dangerous region. Tom, however, never once thought of retreating, for he was launched—launched, as he felt even at that moment of doubt and difficulty—on the last stage of his enterprise; and, if hell and all its legions had yawned at his feet, he was bound to go on.
The path into which he had struck, as being that which seemed to lead in the direction where he had heard the firing, was comparatively easy. As he went on cautiously, throwing the light of his lamp in front of him, he felt surprised that he met with so few difficulties. For a space several yards in width the tall kutcha-grass was so completely trodden down, and the low trees and bushes, with their rank wealth of undergrowth, were so uniformly levelled to the ground, that he could have imagined an army with artillery and baggage-waggons had passed this way. That such a thing was impossible he knew very well, for he had studied the map of Terai again and again with Bâl Narîn. The maharajah's road, which was the only one used for military purposes, was many miles distant from the point they had reached. But what he did not know was that he was in the very track of the monarch of the jungle. Eight months before, when the plains of the north-west were at peace, and the Terai was unhaunted by the deadly fever that, for three-quarters of the year, makes it uninhabitable to all but the savage Aswalias, Jung Bahadoor, who was at that time one of the keenest sportsmen of his generation, brought down from the high Nepaul valley a gallant company of hunters, mounted on tame elephants of proved skill and sagacity, to chase and capture some of the wild elephants that have their dwelling in the morass and jungle, and it was along this road that the hunters had come. A terrible chase it was to any but men mounted and caparisoned as they were, for the wild herd had made it their drive. Hither they came, from the mud in which they had been wallowing—night after night in awful phalanx serried—to drink from a pool in the morass, and to tear down the tall grasses and trees on their passage, for the succulent young shoots that made their food. Had Tom met the dark army, he was lost. Not even the flaming torch, which was a protection from serpents and tigers, would have saved him. They would have rushed over him—crushed him into a grave, where even the birds of prey would scarcely have found him.
Of this danger—the worst that had ever threatened him yet—Tom had no more idea than a child. He trusted for his protection to his torch, his lamp, and his weapons, and all the energies he had to spare from picking out his way were bent on watching for anything that might indicate human neighbourhood. That, at a moment so critical, his mind should have strayed even for an instant from the scenes in which he found himself, seems so strange as to be almost incredible. He was alone; he was surrounded with unknown perils; an object dearer far to him than the preservation of his own life was—or seemed to be—within his grasp; everything might depend upon the way in which he met the next few moments; and yet—I have it on an authority which there is no disputing—at this point his mind began to wander.
He could not help it, any more than he could have helped the curious transfusion of his own thoughts and ideas with those of another, which had come to him now and then since the night when he wandered unbidden into Grace's rose-garden, and dreamed his dream of fear. It came suddenly too, and without, as it seemed, anything to lead up to it. When, thinking to make a signal to Bâl Narîn, he lifted to his lips the flute-like reed which he always carried, and felt his breath quiver through it, he stepped all at once into another world. Instead of the long shrill whistle he had intended to send forth, it was the notes of a melody, which he had sung a year ago, floating with oars suspended, on the reach of the silver Thames by the lawn of the General's little garden, that stole out on the pestilential air of the wild beasts' haunt—'Come where my love lies dreaming—dreaming the happy hours away.' Was it his own voice—or was it the voice of another? He paused and looked round him trying to collect his thoughts. Ah! to him too the scene is changed. What are these—what are these—that come towards him out of the darkness? Old hopes—old memories, old dreams. He is the Indian rajah no longer—he is the English boy, into whose heart the honeyed sweetness of a new land of promise is stealing. 'My love! my love!' under his breath he whispers the magic words. And then again he lifts the reed to his lips, and again the melody that he dared to sing long ago, close—close to his darling's rose-bower—floats out upon the air. 'Come! Come! Come where my love lies dreaming!'
Unconsciously—blindly—he was rushing on. He did not hear the thunder behind him, and the mad cries of Bâl Narîn made no impression whatever upon his senses. Why he swerved aside—how it came about that he should have dashed into the jungle and precipitated himself into the deep nullah that yawned close by, he never knew. He thought he saw the flashing of silver water through trees—this is the only explanation he could ever give. But, meanwhile, as bruised and shaken, he lay in the slime, wondering what had come to him, and bitterly cursing himself for his folly in not being able, at a crisis so momentous, to keep his wits about him, the black army that had been marching in his rear, dashed over the spot where, but a few moments before, he had been tranquilly walking.