"He's a white-wizard, is Kudrat Sharif—that mahout! He does beautiful magic, with his passion and with his pain. It's practically worship, you understand; but the point is, it works!
"The mahouts say Neela Deo did the thing for me; stood up and took it, till he could kill the beast without killing me. Oh, you'll never convince them otherwise. They'll make much of it. They're already pledged to establish it in tradition—which means more than one would think. These mahouts come of lines that know the elephant from before our ancestors were named. They know him as entirely as men can. All his customs are common knowledge to them—in all ordinary and in all extraordinary circumstances. They say that once in many generations an elephant appears who is superior to his fellows—he's the one who sometimes surprises them."
The Chief Commissioner stopped, looking into Skag's eyes for a minute, before he finished:
"I'm a Briton, you understand; stubborn to a degree—positively require demonstration. I'm not qualified to open the elephant-cult to you—it's as sealed as anything—but I've had bits; and I recommend you—if you'll permit me—to give courtesy to whatever the mahouts may choose to tell you. You'll find it more than interesting."
"I'm very grateful to you," Skag answered. "I've had a promise of something and I mean to know more about the mahouts and about elephants."
It was well on in the night when the elephants turned down out of the great highway into their own stockades. Neela Deo staggered and swayed ever so slowly forward, with his head low and his trunk resting heavy and inert on Kudrat Sharif's shoulder; but he got in.
After that no man saw him for sixteen weeks—save the mahouts of his own stockades. But every morning the flower merchants sent huge mounds of flower garlands to comfort him.
Then a proclamation was shouted in the marketplace—in the name of the Chief Commissioner—calling all to come and sit in seats which had been prepared around the parade ground before his elephant stockades—to witness the celebration of Neela Deo's recovery. Great was the rejoicing.
Many Europeans of distinction answered the Chief Commissioner's invitation—from as far as Bombay. But all the Europeans together looked very few; for from the surrounding villages and towns and cities, a vast multitude had been flooding in for days. Sixty-two thousand people found places in good sight of the arena, in prepared seats. That number had been reckoned for; but half as many more thronged the roofs of the stockade buildings and hung—multicoloured density—from their parapets. And above all, a few tall tamarisk trees drooped long branches under hundreds of small boys.
Famous nautch-girls had come from distant cities and trained with those of Hurda for an important part in the celebration. They were all staged on twelve Persian-carpeted platforms, ranged on the ground within the outer edge of the arena and close against the foot of the circular tier of seats. Artists of the world had wrought to clothe these women. Artists in fabric-weaving, in living singing dyes; in cloths of gold, in pure wrought-gold and in the setting of gems.