When half a dozen carcases had been dissected with more or less success, Jahangir shouted a question to Sainton, of whose presence he seemed to be unaware hitherto.
“Tell me, Hathi,” he cried. “Canst perform either trick with thy long sword? Thy arm is strong, but is thy wrist supple?”
All eyes were instantly bent on Roger, to whom Mowbray whispered the King’s meaning lest he had not properly caught the words. The giant grinned genially.
“A slung sheep offers but slight resistance to a blow,” he said. “Were he fresh from the spit I’d sooner eat him.”
Discreet mirth rewarded his humor, but Jahangir wheeled round in his chair towards the ditch and clapped his hands as a signal to the attendants. At once began a series of sanguinary events in which buffaloes contended with nilgau, hunting dogs tore down bears let loose from invisible caverns, and panthers made magnificent leaps after flying deer. Few were real combats. In most cases a helpless creature was ruthlessly slaughtered by some vicious and snarling enemy, and the more ghastly the dying struggles of the doomed antelope or bellowing cow the more excited and vociferous became the spectators.
A fight between elephants was a really thrilling affair. Two magnificent brutes, specially imported from Ceylon, were led up on opposite sides of a low mud wall built on wood and carried into the arena by a host of men. Gorgeously caparisoned, and trumpeting strange squeals of defiance, each elephant was urged towards this barrier by his two riders. Separated at first by the wall, they fought furiously with heads, tusks, and trunks, while the leading mahout encouraged his mount by shrill cries, forcing him to the attack with a steel ankus, or striving to ward off the blows of the opposing beast’s trunk with the same instrument. It was quickly apparent why there were two men astride an elephant. Each cunning brute knew that it was an advantage to get rid of his adversary’s mahout, and, indeed, one rider was killed before the fight was long in progress. But the death of the man so enraged his elephant that he sprang onto the wall ere the second attendant could climb to his head, and gored his opponent in the flank with such ferocity that the other turned and fled.
The two rushed towards the end of the enclosure, and the leading animal charged a stout barricade so blindly that it yielded before his great bulk. He fell, and the pursuer attacked him furiously. At once a terrific fanfare of hautboys and cymbals burst forth, and a number of men ran with lighted fireworks, mostly Catherine wheels, attached to long sticks, which they thrust under the legs and before the eyes of the victor. This device caused him to abandon the assault, and he allowed his remaining mahout to drive him away, but not until two unfortunate bhois, or attendants, had been trodden to death.
Jahangir nodded his satisfaction, and the riders of the elephants were permitted to alight, each man being given a sackful of pice, while the ears of the conquering animal were decorated with tails of the white Tibetan ox, or yak. As for the inanimate corpses of the hapless mahout and his assistants, they were huddled onto biers and borne away, followed by some shrieking women, whose plaints were drowned by the din of trumpets six or seven feet in length and a foot wide at the mouth.
It must not be imagined that the spectacle disgusted the English onlookers. In an age when men lived by the sword, when personal bravery and physical hardihood were the best equipment a youth could possess, there were no fastidious notions as to the sacredness of human life or the deliberate cruelty involved in such encounters.
They were wondering what would provide the next act in this drama of blood and death when a stir towards the rear of the platform on which they stood caused them to look in that direction.