vivid tropic stars.

A couple of hours before midnight the leader halted, and the line behind
him scattered to feed on the bamboos and the luscious grasses, though
the younger calves nuzzled their mothers' breasts. Badshah sank to his
knees to allow his passengers to dismount and relieve him of his pad.
The three men ate and then wrapped themselves in their blankets, for it
was very cold high up in the mountains, and stretched themselves to
sleep, as the great animals around them ceased to feed and rested.
Badshah lowered himself cautiously to the ground and lay down near his
men.

Before Wargrave lost consciousness he marvelled at Dermot's uncanny
power over the huge beasts around them--a power that could make these
shy mammoths thus subservient to his purposes. He began to understand
why his companion was regarded as a demigod by the wild jungle-folk and
hill-dwellers.

When at daybreak the herd moved on again, climbing ever higher in the
mountains, the three men lay flat on Badshah's back and covered
themselves with their grey blankets lest vigilant watchers on the peaks
around might espy them. Thus do the _mahouts_ of the _koonkies_, or
trained female elephants employed in hunting and snaring wild tuskers,
conceal themselves during the chase.

But darkness shielded them effectively when the herd swept at length
through a rocky pass on the frontier-line between India and Bhutan, and
with cries of fear and dismay armed men seated around watch-fires fled
in panic before the earth-shaking host. The screen was penetrated.

Daylight found them on the banks of a broad, swift-flowing river in a
valley between the range of mountains through which they had passed and
a line of still more formidable and snow-clad peaks. The elephants swam
the wide and rushing water, for of all land animals their kind are the
best swimmers. The tiniest babies were supported by the trunks of their
mothers, on to whose backs older calves climbed and were thus carried
across. Without stopping the herd plunged into the awful passes of the
next range, of which they were not clear until the evening of the
following day. Then they halted in dense forest.

Next morning Dermot took from the pockets of Badshah's pad the dresses
and other things that they needed for their disguises, and instead of
replacing the pad concealed it carefully. Then he said:

"We'll leave our escort here, Wargrave, and carry on by ourselves; for
we are not far from inh