It took Tom some little time to recover his breath, climb to the edge of the nullah, and shake off the mud from his clothes. That time, as we know, had been spent by Grace in frenzied prayers to Heaven, and by Bâl Narîn in no less frenzied ejaculations and gestures. When silence fell upon the hut and silence upon the jungle—a silence fearfully broken by the earth-shaking tread of the herd of elephants—when he whistled and shouted, and fired wildly over his head, and no one answered, he made up his mind that all was lost. The young lord whom he had accompanied for gain, and clung to in despite of his own better judgment for love, had met with a sudden and fearful death at the very moment when his end was won.
Overcome for a few instants by pity and sorrow, Bâl Narîn covered his face and wept.
A desire came over him then to see what was left of his unfortunate young master, and leaving the little clearing he plunged into the jungle. His senses being far better trained than Tom's, he had no doubt whatever about the direction he should take. The last articulate sound the rajah had made, before darkness and silence swallowed him up, came from a point known to Bâl Narîn, who had been one of the mahouts in Jung Bahadoor's famous hunt, as a sharp curve in the elephants' drive. For this point he was making as speedily and cautiously as he could, when a tall figure—bareheaded, and covered from head to foot in a coating of mud—stood suddenly before him.
Grasping his weapon, Bâl Narîn challenged the man. He was answered by a voice that made his heart leap into his mouth. 'Don't you know me in this disguise, Billy?' it asked.
'Rajah Sahib'—cried the poor fellow passionately. 'Forgive me. I would have searched for you amongst the dead. Now thank the gods and the demons of the jungle, who have been favourable to his Excellency!' And he fell down before him and held him by the feet.
'Get up, you foolish fellow!' said Tom, who was touched, although he would not show it, by his devotion. 'I have fallen into a mud-bath, and got myself into a pretty mess; but why you should have thought me dead, I confess I don't see. You must have come this way yourself, since I find you here.'
'This way, that is true, Rajah Sahib, and why I came only the gods know. But I kept clear of the Elephants' Chace. I would no more have adventured myself there than I would have slipped my neck into an enemy's noose.'
'The Elephants' Chace,' stammered Tom, 'was that road——?'
'It is the deadliest road in all this region for a man not furnished as a hunter,' said Bâl Narîn. 'And the herd has just gone by. How his Excellency escaped is a mystery.'