"What has befallen Bahadur Khan?" said I.
"He was bitten by a snake and died; the rest the sahib knows," was the answer.
"And how much of the matter hast thou known?"
"As much as might be gathered from one coming in the twilight to seek
satisfaction. Gently, sahib. Let me pull off those boots."
I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting
from his side of the house:
"Tietjens has come back to her room!"
And so she had. The great deer-hound was couched on her own bedstead, on her
own blanket, and in the next room the idle, empty ceiling-cloth wagged light-
heartedly as it flailed on the table.
MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER
ONCE upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear some
forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the trees and burned
the underwood, the stumps still remained. Dynamite is expensive and slow fire
slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the lord of all beasts, who is the
elephant. He will either push the stump out of the ground with his tusks, if he
has any, or drag it out with ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by
ones and twos and threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants
belonged to the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and this superior
beast's name was Moti Guj.
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