mpany
the elephant wherever he might go.

"I've heard," thought Jack, "that these tame ones will often break
away and join wild herds. I'm in a pretty desperate fix if I've got to
remain lashed in this howdah while this brute rambles far and wide
with this troop of companions he has hit upon."

He looked around on every side, but saw nothing that could give him
the slightest cause for hope. With every step he was being carried
deeper and deeper into the recesses of the jungle where no hunter
dare venture, where the elephant, the tiger, and the leopard rule as
undisputed masters. His plight was terrible. Who would free him, who
could free him of the bonds which held him in subjection to so cruel a
fate?

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE PANTHAY WOOD-CUTTERS.

It was within an hour or two of dark, and Jack, faint with hunger and
the strange and exhausting experience through which he had gone that
day, was hanging listlessly in his bonds. The elephants had gathered
in an open stretch at the foot of a deep ravine, and all was very
quiet. The pad-elephant stood with his trunk gently swinging, his huge
ears slowly flapping; he had eaten and drunk, and now he was taking a
rest.

Suddenly into the silence of the narrow valley there fell the sound of
blows. Thud--thud--thud. A pause. Thud--thud--thud, again and again.
Jack started and listened eagerly. There was a ring about the sound
which told him what it was.

"It's the sound of an axe on a tree," cried Jack to himself, and he
knew that other human beings were in the neighbourhood. He collected
all his breath and gave a loud shout. Again and again he shouted. The
noise on the hill-side far above was now stilled, and once more Jack
roared at the top of his voice.

At the next moment his outcries were drowned in the wild trumpeting
of the elephants. The human notes had disturbed them, and they
trumpeted shrilly and moved uneasily away from the neighbourhood of
the pad-elephant. Then the wild herd set off at a trot, went a mile or
more up the ravine, and came to a halt near another feeding-place, a
clump of young bamboos. The tame elephant with its burden had followed
steadily, and now Jack shouted no more. He feared lest his cries
should disturb the herd so much that the wild creatures should take
flight, and run a great distance. If they did so, the pad-elephant
would be sure to follow them, and thus very possibly carry Jack
completely out of reach of the human beings,