shattered by a snorting, braying roar that rang through the
jungle with alarming suddenness.

Wargrave sprang up and groped for his rifle. But his companion lay
tranquilly on the pad.

"It's all right. It's only a tiger that's missed his spring and is angry
about it," he said sleepily. "Lie down again."

"Only a tiger, sir?" repeated Wargrave. "But it sounded close by."

"Yes, but Badshah will look after us. Don't worry"; and the Colonel
turned over and fell asleep.

It was a little time, however, before Frank followed his example, and he
had his rifle under his hand when he did. But the dark bulk of the
elephant towering over them comforted him as he sank to sleep.

A couple of hours later they were on their way again. It was broad
daylight before they emerged from the jungle. It seemed strange to be
out once more in the wide-stretching, open and cultivated plains and to
look back on the great forest and, beyond it, to the mountains towering
to the sky. Before them lay the flat expanse of the hedgeless, fertile
fields dotted here and there with clusters of trimly-built huts or thick
groves of bamboos and seamed with the lines of deep _nullahs_, the tops
of the trees in them barely showing above the level and marking their
winding course.

The _dak_ bungalow at Madpur Duar was soon reached, a single-storied
building with a couple of trees shading the well behind it and a group
of elephants and their _mahouts_. On the verandah Benson and his
daughter were standing, the girl dressed in a khaki drill coat and skirt
over breeches and soft leather gaiters, and waving a welcome to
Badshah's riders.

After a hurried breakfast the latter were ready to start for the day's
sport. By then a line of ten female elephants, the tallest carrying a
_howdah_, the rest only their pads, was drawn up before the bungalow;
and at a word from their _mahouts_ their trunks went up in the air and
the animals trumpeted in salute as the party came out on the verandah.

"We borrowed Mr. Carter's and the Settlement Officer's elephants for the
beat," said Miss Benson, as, wearing a big pith sunhat and carrying a
double-barrelled .400 cordite rifle, she led the way down the verandah
steps.

It had been arranged that she was to take Wargrave with her in her
_howdah_, while her father accompanied Colonel Dermot on Badshah. Her
big elephant knelt down and a ladder was laid against its side, up which
she climbed, followed by the subaltern. When