Kari the elephant

by Dhan Gopal Mukerji

THAT VERY INSTANT THE UP-RAISED FOOT OF THE ELEPHANT WAS ON HIS HEAD

Kari walked away and pawed the sand with his feet to cleanse them. I thought of calling to Kopee who had taken refuge on a tree-top, but I was so anxious to know whether the elephant's foot was hurt or not, that I followed him about until he let me look at it. I was relieved to see that the skin of his foot had not been broken.

Then I called to the monkey to come down from the tree. He shook his head. I knew he was so ashamed of being afraid that he preferred to be alone in the privacy of the tree in order to gather his forces together.

The sun was beginning to sink. The jungle was not very far off and I was certain that the breeze blowing across the river had taken the scent of human beings into the depths of the forest.

The twilight came swiftly. The bars of gold and light vibrated over the tawny waters, and darkness fell like a black sword, cutting the day from the night. The voices of the birds from the tree-tops, here and there died down, and as if to enhance the silence, insect voices came from under the grass. I got on my elephant's back and sat there quietly, for as the evening Silence goes by, each man must make his prayer. As the Silence walked on, I could see the grass waving in zig-zag curves across the river. It was always making half the figure eight in the undergrowth of the jungle.

Gradually all grew still and then over the river came the terrible hunger wail of a tiger. That instant its tawny face scarred with black emerged from behind green leaves. He saw I was across the river. The tiger's body is marked with the same stripes and curves as he makes in the grass when he walks, and people in the jungle can always tell by the wave of the grass which animal has passed that way.

Throughout the country-side, wherever the echo of the wail was heard, a tension fell upon everything. Even the saplings were tense, and you could almost hear the cracking of the muscles of the animals holding themselves together and watching which way the tiger would pass. It was as if the horn of the chase had sounded and blown; each one had to take to cover.

Night came on apace. I wanted to tie Kari to a big tree, but he refused to be tied up that night. He paced up and down the shore without making the slightest noise. Then he would suddenly stand still and stop the waving of his ears in order to listen very intently to shadows of songs that might be passing. I stayed on his back, intent on knowing what he was going to do. Soon, very soon, the river became silver-yellow and over the jungle a quickening silence throbbed from leaf to leaf.

Then swiftly the terrible face of the moon was upon us. Kari snorted and stepped backwards. I, too, was surprised because this was another moon, very rarely seen by men. It was the moon bringing the call of the summer to the jungle. It was the call for hunt and challenge, when elephants kill elephants to win their mates. And under the moon lay a great sinister figure like the terrible face of a dragon.