People were looking to find the concealed lights which revealed this scene of amazing splendour, when thirty-nine of the Chief Commissioner's elephants came out through the stockade gates, single file. Many drums of different kinds, together with a thousand voices, beat a slow double pulse. The elephants, setting their feet precisely to the steady rhythm of it, marched around the entire arena three times. Those elephants were perfect enough—and they knew it! They were freshly bathed and groomed. Their ears showed rose-tinted linings, when they flapped. Their ivories were smooth and pure. Their howdahs—new-lacquered—gleamed rose and orange and blue, with crimson and green silk curtains. Their caparisons of rich velvets, hung heavy with new gold fringes.
Every elephant turned toward the centre of the arena, coming to pause at his own appointed station, evenly spaced around the circle. Then every mahout straightened, freezing to a fixed position that did not differ by a line from the position of his neighbour on either side. Now the people saw that this celebration for Neela Deo, King of all elephants, was to show as much pomp as is prepared for kings of men—and they were deeply content.
The strings of one sitar began to breathe delicate tones. Other sitars came in illusively, till they snared the current of human blood in a golden mesh and measured its flow to the time of mounting emotion. Then Neela Deo himself—Neela Deo, the Blue God!—appeared at the stockade gates alone, with Kudrat Sharif on his neck. His caparison was of crimson velvet, all over-wrought with gold thread. The gold fringes were a yard deep. The howdah was lacquered in raw gold—its curtains were imperial blue. Kudrat Sharif was clothed in pure thin white—like the son of a prince—but he was very frail; and ninety-odd thousand people sent his name, with the name of Neela Deo, up into the Indian night—for the Indian gods to hear.
Neela Deo was barely in on the sanded disk, when the elephants lifted their heads as one and saluted him with an earth-rocking blast; again and yet again. Then he thrust his head forward, reached his trumpet-tip—quivering before him—and made speed till he came close to the Chief Commissioner's place, where he rendered one soft salute and wheeled into position by the stand. This was a movement no one had anticipated. Nothing like it was in the plan; the Chief Commissioner had not intended to ride! But Neela Deo demanded him and there was nothing for it but to go; so with a very white face, he stepped into the howdah.
Waves upon waves of enthusiasm swept the multitude. They shouted to heaven—for all time it was established. No man could ever deny it—Neela Deo himself had made his meaning perfectly plain, that he had done the marvel thing sixteen weeks before, to save the life of his friend—their friend! They stood up and flung their flower-garlands on both of them—as Neela Deo, with a stately tread, carried the Chief Commissioner around the circle. The nautch-girls sprang from their platforms into the middle of the arena and danced their most wonderful dances—tossing the fallen garlands, like forest fairies at play.
Then a thousand voices lifted upon the great chorus of laudation, which had been prepared in high-processional time; the drums and the sitars furnishing a dim background for the volume of sound. The elephants turned out of their stations as Neela Deo passed them and came into their accustomed formation behind him. The tread of four times forty such ponderous feet, in perfect time with the music, shook the earth.
The chorus told the story of the incredible manner of their Chief Commissioner's deliverance; it exalted his record and his character; it pledged the preservation of his fame. Then a master-mahout from High Himalaya went alone to the centre of the disk and in incomparable tones—such as master-mahouts use—having no accompaniment at all, told the story of Neela Deo's birthright. The people were utterly hushed; but the elephants kept their even pace—as if listening. Then the great chorus came back, rendering the acknowledgment of a human race.
At last the multitude rose up and loosed its strangling exultation in mighty shouts. The elephants raised their big heads, threw high their trumpets and rent the leagues of outer night—as if calling to their brothers in the Vindha Hills.
The next part of the celebration was to happen suddenly. The mahouts had planned it in sheer boyishness; and to their mountain hearts it meant something like the clown-play in a western circus. Its success depended on whether Neela Deo had enough foolishness in him—to play the game. So now they wheeled the elephants into their stations again, just in time before one section of the enclosure folded down flat on the ground. This left that part open to the outside world; for the shrubs that used to grow thick at the feet of the tamarisk trees had been rooted up and green tenting-cloth stretched in their place. One shrub still grew in the midst of that opening.
Neela Deo stopped short one moment—frozen so still that he looked like a granite image—then, feeling toward the shrub with his trumpet tip an instant only, flung up his head with a joyous squeal and was upon it before a man could think. The shrub melted to pulp under his tramping feet. Then they saw the black and yellow stripes of the tiger he had killed in this same way—tramping, tramping. He was doing it over again, for them.