face--two
things happened to Skag. A full blast of hot breath drove through him;
and a keen high vibrant tone pierced every nerve. Then Chakkra shouted:

"Gunpat Rao, prince of Vindha--declares the chase is on! Hold fast,
Sahib,--we go!"

The earth rose up and the heavens tipped. There was no foundation; the
bulwarks of earth's crust had given away. The landscape was racing
past--but backward--and Nels, yet ahead, was a still, whirring streak.
The thing hardly believed and never seen in America--that the elephant
is speed-king of the world--was revelation now! No pitch or roll; a
long curving sweep this--seeming scarcely to touch the ground. This
was the going Skag had called for--a night and a day. And Nels was
labouring beside them now, but seeming to miss his tread--seeming to
run on ice.

"Hai!" yelled Chakkra. "Who says there is none other than Neela Deo?"

A thread of silver stretched before them, crossing the line of their
course. It broadened in a man's breath. They turned the curve of the
last slope, and heard the shout of the mahout far ahead. The thief
elephant was running along Nerbudda's margin to a ford.

A roar was about Skag's head and shoulders like a storm--Gunpat Rao
trumpeting again! The landscape blurred. The forward beast was
growing large . . . two standing figures above him--the fling of a
white arm!

The huge red howdah rocked as the thief elephant entered the river; a
moment more, only the howdah showing. Distantly like the hum of
furious insects, Skag heard Chakkra's chant:

"The thief is snared! Holy Nerbudda herself weaved the snare. . . .
The hand of destiny is ours, Sahib. Nay, mine, not thine! Did not the
Deputy Commissioner Sahib say _by necessity_? . . . Plunge in! . . .
Hai, but softly. Prince of thy kind, take the water softly, I say--"

And Gunpat Rao entered the river at a swimming stroke. Skag's eyes had
hardly turned from the great red howdah. There was a keen squeal from
ahead, answered by a fiery hissing intake of Chakkra's breath:

"That, Sahib, is the murderous mahout using his steel hook. . . . Yes,
it was _by necessity_, the Deputy Sahib said. Certainly it was _by
necessity_!"

The fling of a white arm again. Sanford Hantee was standing.

"Carlin!" he called.

The answer came back to him in some mystery of imperishable vibration.

"I am here."

The two great beasts were moiled together against the stream. . . .
The man and woman, wh