“Yes, Pete; but what worries me now is what we are going to do when the elephant stops to rest or sleep.”
“Don’t you worry your head about that, Mister Archie. I know you are weak and pulled down, but just you pay a bit more heed to what I say. It’s what you ought to do now, and what we must do—chance it, sir, chance it, same as I’m doing about something else.”
“What else?” said Archie wearily, as he let his aching body sway with the movement of the great steed.
“About whether this is the right way or the wrong, sir. I don’t know; you don’t know. But perhaps old Rajah does, so what we have got to do, as I said before, is to keep our eyes on that little bantam of a Malay, and chance it, sir—chance it.”
Chapter Thirty.
A Jungle Night.
It was just as the shades of night were coming on that the great elephant stepped out of the tunnel into comparative light. The wall of verdure opened out on either side, and a natural clearing lay before the travellers, while, still bearing what looked like the pale stain of sunshine, there flowing from right to left was the river.
There was a regular track marked out by the various animals that frequented it; and the mud-holes formed by the elephants grew deeper and more given to spurt out water as the great animals passed on till the edge of the river was reached, when they plunged in on to what now seemed to be firm, gravelly soil, with the clear stream pressing against their sides, till the smaller elephant was pretty well breast-deep.