“I’m ready,” said Dick, and he turned to go, but altered his mind, and made so that he could walk round the elephants, going so close to the first that he had been watching so long that, as he paused for a moment close to its head and spoke to the great, blundering creature, it responded by suddenly stretching out its trunk and taking a turn round the lad’s ankle, holding him fast.
“Hurrah walla pala larna fa,” or something like it, cried the man, jumping up from where he had squatted scouring what answered to the elephant’s armpit.
“Phoonk! phoonk!” came in reply, the elephant seeming to be quite content with its capture.
“Tell him to let go,” cried the sergeant: and the man began to jump and dance and stamp upon the elephant’s ribs, yelling and calling it all the ill-names he could in his own tongue, and threatening what he would do with the goad the next time he was mounted behind the creature’s ears.
But the great brute lay quite still, flapping its free ear up and down, rumbling like a young thunderstorm, and blinking at Dick, with the serpent-like coil about his leg.
“Oh, son of a wicked, squinting mother, am I to come and pull thy ugly, great tusks out by the roots?” shrieked the Hindu.
“Woomble! woomble!” went the elephant; and the sergeant stepped forward to give Dick his support.
“Woomph!” roared the animal angrily, and the sergeant started back.
“I don’t think he wants to hurt me,” said Dick; “it only feels tight.”
“I don’t know, sir,” said the sergeant. “I don’t know what to make of these brutes. They’re not like horses.”