“Yah-h-h-h-h!” roared Peter, raising the spear he held; and poising it after the fashion he had learned from the Malays, he seemed about to hurl it at the little mahout, whose head and shoulders he could see plainly now just beyond Rajah’s shabby little tail. “You dare to say another word, and I will pin you where you sit, like the miserable little beetle you are! Now then.—Here, steady, Rajah!—Hold tight, Mister Archie! I am coming to you; but just you make a show of that other spear. You needn’t get up, but make believe to be about to chuck it at him if he isn’t pretty careful.”
Archie held on more tightly to the rope girths by which he had kept his position so long, while Peter rather unsteadily joined him, bringing himself so much nearer to the mahout that he could have pretty well touched him had he extended his spear.
“I say, Mister Archie,” he said, “if old Rajah takes it into his head to move on now, I shall pitch right on to old Chocolate there.—Yah-h!” he roared again.
The mahout, who had apparently begun to recover from his astonishment, had changed his ankus from one hand to the other, and was in the act of drawing his kris, when Peter yelled at him again and made so fierce a thrust with his spear that all the little fellow’s pugnacity died out, or, as it were, passed away in a shriek of fear.
“Ah, that’s better,” cried Peter. “Now then, you have got to do what I tell you.”
The mahout’s eyes rolled as he thrust back his kris into its sheath, the man’s face turning from a rich, pale-brown hue to a dirty, pallid mud colour.
“Here, give us that kris, Mister Archie,” continued Peter in a blustering tone.
“You are not going to use it, Pete?” half-whispered the subaltern.
“You will see, sir,” cried the lad fiercely; and then he almost roared, “He’d better not give me any of his nonsense!” And taking the kris in his hand, he held the blade threateningly towards the mahout and beckoned to him to come.
His gestures were so plain, and the manifestations with the little, wave-bladed dagger so easily comprehensible, that the poor, shivering, little wretch dragged himself out of his seat and knelt upon the head of the smaller elephant and bowed down with his hands extended as if asking for mercy.