"Not like this, Sahib," said Chakkra.
The hint, however, was that the thief elephant would make all speed; that the lead of the four hours would be conserved as carefully as possible by the other mahout.
"But he has a woman's howdah," Chakkra invariably added. "Two Sahibas, as well as the mahout himself. . . . To-morrow will tell—hai, to-morrow will tell, if they go that far!"
That was always the point of the blackest fear—that the elephant ahead should come to some Mohammedan household, and leave Carlin where no one could pass the veil.
"But what of the messenger who brought word to the Sahibas?" Skag asked.
"He would slip away. Some hiding place for him—possibly back at
Hurda."
Chakkra seemed sure of this.
That was Skag's long night. He tried to think of the Kabuli as if he were an animal. A man might have a destroying enmity against a cobra or a tiger or a python; but it was not black and self-defiling like this thing which crept over him, out of the miasma of Deenah's tale.
In the dawn they reached a small river. Skag saw Nels lose his tread in the deepening centre, swing down with the current an instant and then strike his balance, swimming. Here was coolness and silence. To-night he would know. To-night, if he did not have Carlin—
. . . Gunpat Rao stood shoulder-deep in the stream. Skag fancied a gleam of deep massive humour under the tilt of the great ear below him, as the elephant, none too delicately, set his foot forward into the deeper part of the stream. His trunk and Chakkra's voice were raised together—for Chakkra was slipping: