Also before his eyes was the joy of Nels in action—the big fellow leaping to his task, steadily drawing them on, it appeared; and always a breath of ease would blow across Skag's being as he noted the quickening; but when that was merely sustained for a while, the hope of it wore away, and he wanted more and more speed—past any giving of man or beast. . . . The old drum of the Kabuli tale constantly recurred, as if a trap door to the deeps were often lifted. Skag would brush his hand across his brow, shading his head with his helmet lifted apart for a moment, to let the sunless air circulate.
They passed through the open jungle merging into a country of low hills and frequent villages. The rains that had broken in Poona had not yet reached this country. . . . The sun went down and the afterglow changed the world. Carlin's afterglow, it was to Skag, from their moment at the edge of the jungle—on the evening of the troth; there was pain about it now. India had a different look to him—alien, sinister, of a depth of suffering undreamed of, because of the beating bass of the Kabuli tale, intensified by the sense that falling night would slacken the chase. . . .
Skag had lost the magic of externals, the drift of his great interest. All his lights were around Carlin, and powers of hatred, altogether foreign to his faculties, pressed upon him in the threat of the hour. . . . Yes, Chakkra remembered the five Kabuli men who had sat in the market-place. Yes, he remembered the story of the beating of the monster, the long slow healing after that; and his last look, as he left Hurda for the last time. . . .
It was well, Chakkra said, that they had open country for the chase. It was well that the Kabuli did not call to the Sahibas, and hide them in one of the great Mohammedan households of Hurda—where even Indian Government might not search. It was well that the Kabuli did not dare to come closer to Hurda than this, so that they had a chance to overtake his elephant afield, before the walls of the purdah closed. . . .
Such was the burden of Chakkra's ramble, and there was no balm in it for Skag. The weight settled heavier and heavier upon him with the ending of the day. Nels was a phantom of grey before them in the shadows, leisurely showing his powers. At times, while he ranged far ahead, they would not hear him for several minutes; then possibly a half-humorous sniff in the immediate dark, and they knew the big fellow waited for Gunpat Rao to catch up. Once he was lost ahead so long that Skag spoke:
"Nels—"
The answer was a bound of feet and a whine below that pulled the man's hand over the rim of the howdah, as if to reach and touch his good friend.
"Take it, Nels—good work, old man," Skag said.
They passed through zones of coolness as the trail sank into hollows between the hills, and Gunpat Rao rolled forward. Pitch and roll, pitch and roll—as many movements as a solar system and the painful illusion of slowness over all. Often in Skag's nostrils one of the subtlest of all scents made itself known, but most elusively—a suggestion of shocking power—like an instant's glimpse into another dimension. If you answer at all to an expression which at best only intimates—the smell of living dust—you will have something of the thing that Skag sensed in the emanation of Gunpat Rao, warming to action.
Occasionally as they crossed the streams there was delay in finding the trail on the other side. Once in the dark after a ford, when Nels had rushed along the left bank to find the scent, Gunpat Rao plunged straight on to the right without waiting; and the mahout sang his praises with low but fiery intensity: