He started on slowly.
Unnoticed by either of the boys, the mahout on Rajah's neck had kept the elephant close to the river bank. The mahout was dozing, and Rajah was filling the piece of hose, more generally known as his trunk, with Wabash water and squirting it into his open mouth.
Now, Rajah was an eccentric elephant. There were times when he was full of mischief and playful, and other times when the wild jungle blood got the upper hand of him and he became dangerous.
On two or three occasions, when Old Ben, the African lion, had tried to mix things with the royal Bengal tiger, Rajah had been called in to separate the fighters with a well-directed stream, hurled with catapult force from his trunk.
Rajah's cunning little eyes had been taking in the quarrel between the Dutchman and the Chinaman. Something prompted him to elevate his trunk and throw a stream after the retreating Dutch boy.
The lad was knocked off his feet, his stick going one way and his bundle the other. He jumped to his feet, spluttering, and whirled around.
Rajah was innocently squirting a dozen or more gallons of the river into his capacious throat, but the Chinaman, the empty pail still in his hand, was laughing so that he almost fell off the bank.
It was the most natural thing in the world for the Dutch boy, in the excitement of the moment, to lay the whole blame on the Chinese boy's shoulders.
The Dutchman had not seen Rajah use his trunk, and the Chinaman had. It was very laughable, and the Chinaman's cackling mirth was unrestrained.
The Dutchman saw only the empty bucket in the Chinaman's hand, and it seemed certain the deluge of water had come from the bucket.