The little party followed the waiter out into the hall, where Ramball was standing, hat in one hand, yellow handkerchief in the other, dabbing his bald head and looking very much excited.
“Hah!” he cried. “There you are, gentlemen!” And he put his handkerchief on the top of his head and made a movement as if to thrust his hat into his pocket, but recollected himself and put the handkerchief into the hat instead. “I have been up to the school, gentlemen— Your servant, sir. I beg pardon for interrupting you; but I have been up to the school to ask for the young gentlemen there, and I saw Mr Wrench the Doctor’s man, and he said that you had come on here to dinner.—Pray, pray, gentlemen, come and help me, or I am a ruined man.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” cried Singh and Glyn in a breath.
“Didn’t you hear, gentlemen? He’s got away again—pulled the iron picket out of the ground, and gone off with the chain and all chinkupping from his leg. I have got men out all over scouring the country, and as soon as they have found out where he is I’d take it kindly, gentlemen, if you’d come and bring him home.”
“Come, come, my man,” said the Colonel good-humouredly, “isn’t this rather cool?”
“Cool, sir! It’s too hot to be borne. That great beast will be the death of me before he’s done. Do say a kind word for me, sir, to the young gents. They have got a power over that beast as beats miracles. I wouldn’t ask, sir, but I’m about done. I should have shot him the other day if these ’ere young gents hadn’t stopped me and showed me, a man of fifty, as has handled poisonous snakes and gone after lions before now when they’d got out—showed me, I say, that I didn’t understand my work.”
“Oh, well,” said the Colonel, “I—I—”
At that moment the elephant’s keeper and another man, a driver of one of the caravans, hurried excitedly into the hotel hall, dragging between them a miserable-looking object, drenched with mud and water, and trembling in every limb.
“Mr Ramball, sir!” cried the keeper.
“What, have you found him?” cried the proprietor.