"I'd like to have a chance with him," said Skag.
The master-mahout smiled—a mystic-musical smile, like his voice.
"I have come from my place for a moment," he said, looking intently into Skag's eyes, "for a purpose. We have heard of you, Son-of-Power. The wisdom of the ages is to know the instant when to act; not too late, not too soon. We have seen you work this day; and the fame of it will go before and after you, the length and breadth of India—among the mahouts."
He turned, pointing toward the elephant regiment. Many mahouts were shouting something together; their right hands flung high.
"It is right for you to know," the master-mahout went on, "that mahouts are a kind of men by themselves apart. Their knowledges are of elephants—sealed—not open to those from without. Yet I speak as one of my kind, being qualified, if in the future you have need of anything from us—it is yours."
And without giving Skag a chance to answer him, but with a stately gesture of salaam, the master-mahout had returned to his place and was calling another elephant.
Skag turned toward Horace, who was drawing a fine looking native forward by the hand. The boy spoke with repressed excitement—otherwise showing no sign of Nut Kut's strenuous handling:
"Skag Sahib, I want you to know Kudrat Sharif, the malik of the Chief Commissioner's elephant stockades. It is not known, you understand—meaning my father—but the malik has always been very wonderful to me."
Kudrat Sharif smiled with frank affection on the boy, as he drew his right hand away, to touch his forehead in the Indian salaam. The gesture showed both grace and dignity—as Dickson Sahib had said.
"I am exalted to carry back to my stockades the story of the manner of your work, Son-of-Power," he began.