e wanted to
know what certain holy men know; men who dare to walk to and fro in the
jungles without arms, apparently without fear. He wanted to know what
the priests of Hanuman know about monkeys; and what _mahouts_ of famous
elephants like Neela Deo and Mithi Baba and Gunpat Rao of the Chief
Commissioner's stockades, know about elephants.

At this point one reflection was irresistible. The priests of Hanuman
gave all they had--care, patience, tenderness, even their lives, to the
monkey people. There were no two ways about the _mahouts_; they loved
the elephants reverently; even regarding them as beings more exalted
than men. As for the holy men--the sign manual of their order was love
for all creatures. No, there was no getting away from the fact that
you must give yourself to a thing if you want to know it. . . . Skag
would come up breathless out of this contemplation--only to find it was
the easiest thing he did--to love wild animals. . . .

Skag had reason to hold high his trust in animals. He had entered the
big cat cages countless times and always had himself and the animals in
hand. He had made good in the tiger pit-trap and certainly the loose
tiger near the monkey glen didn't charge. All this might have
established the idea that all animals were bound to answer his love for
them.

But India was teaching him otherwise.

In the hills back of Poona he had met a murderer. That cat-scream at
the last chilled him to the very centre of things. Cheetahs were
malignant; no two ways about that. Skag hadn't failed. He never was
better. There was no fear nor any lack of concentration in his work
upon the cheetah beast. Any tiger he knew would have answered to his
cool force, but the cheetah didn't.

It was the same with the big snake in the grass jungle. Skag had met
fear there--something of monstrous proportion, more powerful than will,
harder to deal with by a wide margin than any plain adjustment to
death. It stayed with him. It was more formidable than pain. He had
talked with Cadman about a peculiar inadequacy he felt in dealing with
the snake--as if his force did not penetrate. Cadman knew too much to
hoot at Skag's dilemma. The more a man knows, the more he can believe.

"It would be easier with a cobra than a constrictor," Cadman had said.
"You'd have to strike just the right key, son. This is what I mean:
The wireless instruments of the Swastika Line answer to one pitch; the
ships of t