Gay-Neck

by Dhan Gopal Mukerji

A few minutes later we heard one or two snappings of small twigs almost as faint as a man cracking his fingers. It was a stag whose antlers had got caught in some vines and he was snapping them to get himself freed. Hardly had he passed when the jungle grew very tense with expectation. Sounds began to die down. Out of the ten or a dozen different noises that we had heard all at once, there now remained only three: the insects' tick tack tock, the short wail of the stag—no doubt the constrictor was strangling him near the water hole—and the wind overhead. Now the elephants were coming. Hatis (elephants), about fifty in a herd, came and played around the place below us. The squeal of the females, the grunt of the males, and the run run run of the babies filled the air.

I do not remember what happened next, for I had dozed off into a sort of waking sleep, and in that condition I heard myself talking pigeon-language to Gay-Neck. I was experiencing a deep confusion of sleep and dream. Someone shook and roused me. To my utter amazement Ghond whispered "I cannot hold you any more. Wake up! Mischief is abroad. A mad elephant has been left behind. The straggler is bent on harm. We are not high enough to be altogether out of the reach of his trunk, and if he raises it far enough he will scent our presence. Wild elephants hate and fear man and once he gets our odour he may stay about here all day in order to find out where we are. Rouse thy vigilance, lad. Draw the blade of alertness before the enemy strikes."

There was no mistake about that elephant. In the pale light of early dawn I could discern a sort of hillock darkly moving about under our tree. He was going from tree to tree and snapping off a few succulent twigs that autumn had not yet blighted. He seemed greedy and bent on gorging himself with those delicacies, rare for the time of the year. In about half an hour he performed a strange trick, putting his fore feet on the bole of a thick tree, and swinging up his trunk. It gave him the appearance of a far-spreading mammoth; with that enormously long reach he almost touched the top of the tree and twisted the most delectable branches off its boughs. After having denuded it of its good twigs he came to a tree next to ours, and there did the same thing. Now he found a slender tree which he pulled down with his trunk, and placed his forefeet on the poor bent thing and broke it with a crash under his own weight. He ate all that he could of that one. While he was breakfasting thus, his rampage frightened the birds and monkeys, who flew in the air or ran from tree to tree jabbering in terror. Then the elephant put his feet on the stump of the broken tree and reached up into ours until he touched the branch on which we sat. Hardly had he done so when he squealed, for the odour of man all beasts fear, and swiftly withdrew his trunk. After grunting and complaining to himself he put up his trunk again very near Ghond's face. Just then Ghond sneezed almost into the elephant's nostrils. That struck panic into the latter's heart; he felt beleaguered by men. Trumpeting and squealing like a frightened fiend, he dashed through the jungle, breaking and smashing everything before him. Again the parrots, thick as green sails, flew in the sky. Monkeys screamed and raced from tree to tree. Boars and stags stampeded on the floors of the jungle. For a while the din and tumult reigned unchecked. We had to wait some time before we dared to descend from our perch in order to resume our homeward journey.

Late that day we reached home after being carried on horseback by a caravan which we were fortunate enough to meet. All three of us were dead tired, but we forgot our fatigue when we beheld Gay-Neck in his nest in our house at Dentam. Oh, what joy! That evening before I went to sleep I thought of the calm quiet assurance of the Lama who said: "Your bird is safe."

CHAPTER VI

GAY-NECK'S TRUANCY

ut the day after our return Gay-Neck flew away again, in the morning, and failed to put in an appearance later. We waited for him most anxiously during four successive days, and then, unable to bear the suspense any longer, Ghond and I set out in search of him, determined to find him, dead or alive. This time we hired two ponies to take us as far as Sikkim. We had made sure of our path by asking people about Gay-Neck in each village that we had to pass through. Most of them had seen the bird and some of them gave an accurate description of him: one hunter had seen him in a Lamasery nesting next to a swift under the eaves of the house; another, a Buddhist monk, said that he had seen him near their monastery in Sikkim on a river bank where wild ducks had their nest, and, in the latest village that we passed through on the second afternoon we were told that he was seen in the company of a flock of swifts.

Led by such good accounts we reached the highest table-land of Sikkim and were forced to bivouac there the third night. Our ponies were sleepy, and so were we, but after what seemed like an hour's sleep, I was roused by a tenseness that had fallen upon everything. I found the two beasts of burden standing stiff; in the light of the fire and that of the risen half moon I saw that their ears were raised tensely in the act of listening carefully. Even their tails did not move. I too listened intently. There was no doubt that the silence of the night was more than mere stillness; stillness is empty, but the silence that beset us was full of meaning, as if a God, shod with moonlight, was walking so close that if I were to put out my hand I could touch his garment.

Just then the horses moved their ears as if to catch the echo of a sound that had moved imperceptibly through the silence. The great deity had gone already; now a queer sensation of easing the tense atmosphere set in. One could feel even the faintest shiver of the grass, but that too was momentary; the ponies now listened for a new sound from the north. They were straining every nerve in the effort. At last even I could hear it. Something like a child yawning in his sleep became audible. Stillness again followed. Then a sighing sound long drawn out, ran through the air; which sank lower and lower like a thick green leaf slowly sinking through calm water. Then rose a murmur on the horizon as if someone were praying against the sky line. About a minute later the horses relaxed their ears and switched their tails and I, too, felt myself at ease. Lo! thousands of geese were flying through the upper air. They were at least four thousand feet above us, but all the same the ponies heard their coming long before I did.