Caves of Terror by Talbot Mundy (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

examination I began to suspect that King was not quite dead, so I recalled the old life-saver's drill and got to work on him. It took time. As King came more and more to his senses, and vomited a bit, and began to behave in all ways like a living man again, I had a chance to talk to the mahouts; and they were just like the members of any other union, preferring conversation to alleged hard labor any day of the week. They told me why the elephants were being washed so early and we enjoyed a regular conversazione on the beach.

It appeared the elephants were wanted to take part in a procession, and for a while they let me guess what sort of a procession. But at last they took compassion on my ignorance.

"She has issued invitations to a party for princesses in her panch mahal!"

Who was she? Everybody knew who she was!

"The Princess Yasmini?" I suggested.

Whereat they all chuckled and made grimaces, and did everything except acknowledge her name in public.

And then suddenly Athelstan King decided to sit up and spat some more water out and tried to laugh. And they thought that was so exquisitely funny that they all laughed too.

Then, when he had coughed a little more—

"We're going to attend that party!"

"Why?" I asked him.

"Two reasons." But he had to cough up more water before he could tell them. "One: The Gray Mahatma will never rest until he knows we're dead, or done for, and the safest place is close to the enemy; and, two: I never will rest until I know the secret of that science of theirs!"

"How in thunder are we going to get back?" I objected.

"Ride!" he suggested.

"How—when—where?"

"Elephant—now—to her palace," he answered.

"They're not her elephants."

"So much the better! She'll think the Maharajah knows all about us. She'll have to accord us protection after that."

He asked a dozen more questions, and finally struggled to his feet.

"My friend," he said then to the chief mahout, "if you propose to take us two sahibs to her palace, and be back at your master's stables in time to get ready for the Bibi-kana, you'll have to hurry!"

"But I did not propose it!" the mahout answered.

"Nay, the gods proposed it. Which is your fastest elephant?"

"That great one yonder—Akbar. But who is giving orders? We are a maharajah's servants."

"The gods are ordering all this business!" King assured him. "I wish to ride to her palace."

"By her leave?"

"By the gods' leave."

"Will the gods pay me?"

"Doubtless. But she will pay first—setting the gods a good example."

The native of India finds it perfectly convenient to ride on a six-inch plank, slung more or less like a house-painter's platform against an elephant's bulging ribs, and it does not seem to make much difference to him when more weight is on one side than on the other. But King and I had to stand and hold each other's hands across the pad; and even so we were by no means too secure, for Akbar resented being taken away from the herd and behaved like a mutinous earthquake.

It was not so far to the city by road, because the river wound a good deal and the road cut straight from point to point. But it was several miles, and we covered it at pretty nearly the speed of a railroad train.

In spite of his rage, Akbar had perfect control of himself. Having missed about half his morning swim, and the herd's society, he proposed to miss nothing else, and there was not one cart, one ekka, one piled-up load in all those miles that he did not hit and do his utmost to destroy. There was not one yellow dog that he did not give chase to and try to trample on.

He stopped to pull the thatch from the roof of a little house beside the road, but as the plying ankus made his head ache he couldn't stay long enough to finish that job but scooted uproad again in full pursuit of a Ford car, while an angry man shoved his head through the hole in the roof of the house and cursed all the rumps of all the elephants, together with the forebears and descendants of their owners and their wives.

It seemed that Akbar was fairly well-known thereabouts. The men in the Ford car shouted the news in advance of his coming, and the road into the city began to look like the track of a routed army. Every man and animal took to his heels, and Akbar trumpeted wild hurrahs as he strained all tendons in pursuit. He needed no second wind, because he never lost his first, but he took the whole course as far as the city gate at a speed that would have satisfied Jehu, son of Nimshi, who, the Bible says, made Israel to sin.

That particular city gate consisted of an arch, covered with carvings of outrageous-looking gods, and as a picture display it was perfect, but as an entrance to a crowded city it possessed no virtue. It was so narrow that only one vehicle could pass at a time, and the whole swarm jammed between it and us like sticks in front of a drain.

And not even Akbar's strength was so great that he could shove them through, so the ancient problem of an irresistible force in contact with an immovable object was presented, and solved by Akbar after a fashion of his own.

He picked the softest spot, which was a wain-load of cotton bales, and upset it, cannoning off that cushion so swiftly as to come within an ace of scattering his four passengers across the landscape; and discerning, with a swift strategic eye that would have done credit to the dashingest cavalry general, that that rout was complete and nothing could be gained by adding to it, he headed for the river and the women's bathing place, took the broad stone steps at a dead run, and plunged straight in.

No ship was ever launched with more perfect aplomb, nor floated more superbly on an even keel than did Akbar at the women's bathing ghat. For a moment I thought he proposed to lie down there and finish his interrupted toilet, but he contented himself with squirting water on the sore spot caused by the thumping ankus of the driver's and set out to swim upstream.

It was not until he had reached the second ghat and climbed the steps there that Akbar put himself in Napoleon's class. When he reached the top of the steps no amount of whacking with the ankus could make him turn to the right and follow the city street. He turned to the left, tooted a couple of wild hurrahs through his newly wetted whistle, and raced to meet the traffic as it struggled through the gate in single file!

There was ruin ripe for harvest and it looked like the proper time to jump. But suddenly—with that delightful wheeled panic at his mercy, the big brute stopped, stood still and looked at them, muttering and gurgling to himself. Instantly the mahout began petting him, calling him endearing names and praising his wisdom and discretion. I can't swear that the beast understood what was said to him, but he acted exactly as if he did. He picked up dust from the street with his trunk, blew a little of it in the general direction of the defeated enemy, blew a little more on himself, and turned his rump toward the gate, as if to signify that hostilities were over!

As he did that, a man who was something of an athlete swung himself up on the off-side footboard, and a second later the proud face of the Gray Mahatma confronted me across the saddle-pad alongside King's!

"You are heavy enough to balance the two of us," he said, as if no other comment were necessary. "Why did you run away from me? You can never escape!"

Well, of course anybody could say that after he had found us again.

"Was it you who checked this elephant?" I asked him, remembering what he had done to the black panther and the snakes, but he did not answer.

"Where do you think you are going?" I asked.

"That is what the dry leaves asked of the wind," he answered. "An observant eye is better than a yearning ear, and patience outwears curiosity!"

Suddenly I recalled a remark that King had made on the beach and it dawned on me that by frightening the mahout into silence the Mahatma might undo the one gain we had made by that plunge and swim. As long as the Maharajah who owned the elephant was to hear about our adventure, all was well. News of us would reach the Government. Most of the maharajahs are pro-British, because their very existence as reigning princes depends on that attitude, and they can be relied on to report to the British authorities any irregularity whatever that comes under their notice and at the same time does not incriminate themselves.

The same thought probably occurred to King, but he was rather too recently recovered from drowning to be quick yet off the mark and besides, the Mahatma was between him and the mahout, whereas I had a free field. So I tugged at the arm of the second mahout, who was sitting behind his chief, and he scrambled down beside me.

The Mahatma tried to take immediate advantage of that, and the very thing he did made it all the easier for me to deal with the second mahout, who had made the trip with us and who stared into my face with a kind of puzzled mistrust. The Mahatma, as active as a cat, climbed up behind the chief mahout and sat astride the elephant's neck in the place where the second mahout had been, and began whispering.

"What is your Maharajah's name?" I asked my neighbor on the plank.

"Jihanbihar," he answered, giving a string of titles too that had no particular bearing on the situation. They sounded like a page of the Old Testament.

"You observe that his favorite elephant is about to be stolen with the aid of the Gray Mahatma!"

The fellow nodded, and the expression of his face was not exactly pleased; he may have been one of a crowd that got cursed by the Mahatma for asking too many impertinent questions.

"He has a reputation, that Mahatma, hasn't he?" I suggested. "You have heard of the miracles that he performs?"

He nodded again.

"You see that he is talking to the chief mahout now? Take my word for it, he is casting a spell on him! Would you like to have him cast a spell on you too?"

He shook his head.

"Run swiftly then, and tell the Maharajah sahib to get a Brahman to cancel the spell, and you will be rewarded. Go quickly."

He dropped from the plank and went off at a run just as the Mahatma turned and saw him. The Mahatma had been whispering in the mahout's ear, and as his eye met mine I laughed. For a moment he watched the man running, and then, as if to demonstrate what a strange mixture of a man he was, he laughed back at me. He acknowledged defeat instantly, and did not appear in the least annoyed by it, but on the contrary appeared to accord me credit for outwitting him, as undoubtedly I had.

India is not a democratic country. Nobody is troubled about keeping the underworld in its place, so mahout or sweeper has the ear of majesty as readily as any other man, if not even more so. And it would not make the slightest difference now what kind of cock and bull story the mahout might tell to the Maharajah. However wild it might be it would certainly include the fact that two white men had ridden to Yasmini's palace on the Maharajah's favorite elephant after having been fished out of the river by mahouts at the elephant's bathing ghat.

It was the likeliest thing in the world that representations would be made that very afternoon by telegraph to the nearest important British official, who would feel compelled to make inquiries. The British Government can not afford to have even unknown white men mysteriously made away with.

The Gray Mahatma took all that for granted and nodded comprehendingly. His smile, as we neared Yasmini's palace gate, appeared to me to include a perfect appreciation of the situation. He seemed to accept it as candidly as he had acknowledged my frequent escapes the night before.

Ismail opened the gate without demur and Akbar sauntered in, being used to palaces. He passed under the first arch into the second courtyard, coming to a halt at a gate on the far side that was too small for his enormous bulk where he proceeded to kneel without waiting