cross 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 question