The Three Sapphires Part 31

In front of Finnerty the jungle was being rent asunder. With a wild trumpet note of battle, drawn by the bell clangor, an elephant crashed through impeding limbs and seized the evil-eyed goblin.

"A light!" Finnerty grabbed the torch, and as it flared to a match that trembled in Mahadua's fingers he thrust it back into the guide's hand, c.o.c.king the hammers of his 10-bore.

The resined-torch flare picked out against the grey of Moti's neck a white-and-black necklace, the end of which was wound about a swaying vine, and in the coils, drawn flat like an empty bag, was a man from whose neck dangled a clanging bell.

"A python!" Finnerty cried as he darted forward to get a shot at the wide-jawed head that, swaying back and forth, struck viciously with its hammer nose at Moti's eyes.

The jungle echoed with a turmoil that killed their voices; the shrill, trumpet notes of Burra Moti had roused the forest dwellers; a leopard, somewhere up in the hills, answered the defiant roars; black-faced monkeys, awakened by the din, filled the branches of a giant sal and screamed in anger.

Great as was the elephant's strength, she could not break the python's deadly clasp; she was like a tarpon that fights a bending rod and running reel, for the creeper swayed, and the elastic coils slipped and held and gave and gathered back, until its choking strength brought her to her knees.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "GREAT AS WAS THE ELEPHANT'S STRENGTH, SHE COULD NOT BREAK THE PYTHON'S DEADLY CLASP."]

For a second the serpent's head was clear--a yard above, and the 10-bore spat its lead fair into the yawning mouth. The coils slipped to looseness; the big elephant neck drew in the cooling air, and Moti, wise as a human, knew that she was saved. A grunt of relief rippled weakly from her trunk, and Finnerty, slipping up as she lay still bound in the python's folds, patted her on the forehead and let her hear his voice.

"Put the bell on her, sahib," Mahadua advised, "for now that she is tired she will be at peace."

Mahadua's call to the carriers was answered far down the trail; but rea.s.sured by his cry of, "The big snake is dead!" they came back. More torches were lighted, their flickering glare completing a realistic inferno.

Down on her bended legs like a huge, elephant-faced G.o.d, a dead man, clad in the snuff-coloured robe of a priest, laced to her neck by the python coils and surrounded by black-skinned torch-bearers, Moti might well have been taken for some jungle fetish.

The men of Mandi carried little axes in their belts, and with these the serpent cable was cut and uncoiled. He was a gigantic brute, thirty feet long and thicker than a man's thigh. The mottled skin, a marvellous pattern of silver and gold and black, looked as though nature had hung out an embellished sign of "Beware!" Or, perhaps, mothering each of its kind, had, with painstaking care, here limned a deceiving screen like the play of sunlight or moonlight through leaves on the dark limb of a tree.

As the priest's limp body flopped to earth a jade-handled knife fell from a leather girdle. Swinton picked it up, saying: "This is familiar, major."

"There are two of them," Finnerty answered, stooping to reach another that still rested in its sheath.

The strap that held the sapphire bell, wound twice around the priest's shoulders, was evidently intended for Moti's neck, and with a continuous stream of low-voiced endearments, Finnerty buckled it to place.

Touching the iron chain that still held in its stride-shortening grip Moti's legs, Finnerty said: "That's why they came along at such a slow pace, and it will help us shoo the old girl back; she'll know that she can't cut up any didos."

Mahadua, though he didn't understand the English, realising something of this, said: "Sahib, Moti will be like a woman that has had her cry of pa.s.sion; she will now bear with her friends. I will go in the lead with a torch, and if the sahib will spare one of the bridle reins, holding an end and allowing Moti to take the other end in her fingers as she might the tail of an elephant, she will follow the horse."

It was soon arranged thus. At a word from Finnerty, Moti lumbered heavily to her feet, while he stood with uplifted whip, ready to cut a stinging blow to her trunk should she show signs of temper. Quite understanding this threat, Moti gently thrust her trunk toward the major's face and fumbled his chin with her thumb and finger as though she would say: "I know a friend when I find him."

As they neared the elephant encampment, Moti, catching the sound of Bahadar's ears fanning flies, rumbled a soft message of peace; but there was no expected noise of greeting from the natives, no bustle of sleepers rising to greet the sahibs. They came right into the camp before some of the men, who had slept with their heads rolled in the folds of turbans or loin cloths, sat up groggily or struggled to incapable feet. The mahout reeled up from somewhere near Bahadar and salaamed drunkenly, a foolish, deprecating leer on his lips.

The sight of Moti partly sobered him, and his mind caught up the blurred happenings of the night. "An evil spirit, sahib," he babbled, "caused us to fall heavy in sleep, and we were wakened by the breaking of the rawhide nooses that bound Moti; then she fled to the jungle."

"This fool is drunk!" Mahadua declared angrily. "If the sahib will beat him with a whip he will tell who brought the arak."

Gothya repudiated Mahadua's a.s.sertion, but a firm tap of the riding whip on his b.u.t.tocks, with threats of more, gradually brought out the story of their debauch. A party of native liquor runners, men who smuggled arak across the line from Nepal, had stumbled upon the party and had driven a thriving trade.

"That accounts largely for the stealing of Moti," Finnerty declared. He had in his hand the rawhide noose, showing that it had been cut close to the elephant's leg. Evidently the priest had been able to crawl right in to the camp, the drunkards having let their fire die.

The mahout, salaaming, said: "Sahib, the jungle is possessed of evil G.o.ds to-night. Just when it was growing dark we saw pa.s.sing on a white horse the one who gallops at night to destroy."

"Was that before you became drunk, or since?" Finnerty asked sarcastically.

"At that time the wine had not arrived, sahib. We all saw pa.s.sing yonder in the jungle where there is no path the white horse."

"Gad! It has been the girl coming down out of the hills," Finnerty said to Swinton. "There must be something about to materialise when she waited so late. We'll camp here," he added to Mahadua. "Send a couple of these fellows to the keddha to tell Immat to bring out his tusker, with a couple of ropes."

The men were sent off, a fire built, the tent pitched, and Finnerty's servant, who had been brought in charge of the commissariat, prepared a supper for the sahibs.

Bahadar, seeing that Burra Moti had overcome her waywardness, knelt down for a restful night, but Moti, true to her African elephant habit, remained on her stalwart legs, fondling her recovered sapphire trinket.

Chapter XIX

Like the aftermath of a heavy storm, the night held nothing but the solemn forest stillness; the tired sahibs lay in its calm creatures of a transient Nirvana till brought from this void of restful bliss by the clarion of a jungle c.o.c.k rousing his feathered harem.

A golden-beaked black "hill myna" tried his wondrous imitative vocal powers on the c.o.c.k's call from the depths of a tree just above them, and when this palled upon his fancy he piped like a magpie or drooled like a cuckoo; then he voiced some gibberish that might have been simian or gathered from the chatter of village children.

The camp stirred; the natives, shame in their hearts and aches in their heads, crawled into action. Amir Alli, the cook, built a fire, and brewed tea and made toast.

Lord Victor was filled with curiosity over the c.o.c.k crow, and when it was explained that there were wild fowl about he became possessed of a desire to shoot some.

After breakfast Finnerty loaded a gun and sent Mahadua with Lord Victor after the jungle fowl. They were gone an hour, for the beautiful black-red jungle c.o.c.k had led them deep into the forest before falling to the gun.

Upon their return Finnerty fancied there was an unusual diffidence about Lord Victor; he seemed disinclined to dilate upon his sporting trip; also Mahadua had a worried look, as if he held back something he should unfold.

A little later, as Finnerty went to the spot where Moti and Raj Bahadar were feeding upon limbs the men had brought, he heard Mahadua say to Gothya: "Does a spirit leave hoofprints in the earth as big as my cap, believer in ghosts? And does it ride back to the hills in daylight?"

Then Gothya caught sight of Finnerty, and the wrangle ceased.

When the major had looked at the elephants for a minute he drew Mahadua into the jungle, and there said: "Now, s.h.i.+kari man, tell me what has entered through those little eyes of yours this morning?"

The face of Mahadua wrinkled in misery. "Sahib," he begged, "what am I to do? I eat master's salt, and yet----" He was fumbling in the pocket of his jacket; now he drew forth a rupee and tendered it to Finnerty, adding: "Take this, master, and give it back to the young lord sahib that I may now speak, not having eaten his salt to remain silent."

Finnerty threw the silver piece into the jungle, saying: "Bribery is for monkeys. And now that you serve but one master what have you of service for him?"

The man's eyes, which had been following with regret the rupee's spinning flight, now reverted to his master's face. "Going I saw in soft earth the print of hoofs, the front ones having been shod with iron; they were not small ones such as Bhutan ponies have, nor a little larger like the Arab horses, but wide and full, such as grow on the _Turki_ breed."

By the "Turki breed" Mahadua meant the Turcoman or Persian horse, Finnerty knew, and the grey stallion Marie rode was one such. He asked: "Was it the track of the white horse Gothya thought carried an evil spirit?"

"Yes, sahib; for as we went beyond after the jungle hens the mem-sahib who rides the grey stallion pa.s.sed, going up into the hills, and a road bears its burden both coming and going."

Finnerty jumped mentally. Why had Lord Victor given Mahadua a rupee to say nothing of this incident? "But she did not see you nor the sahib?"

he queried.

"She did not see your servant, but the young man spoke with her."

"And he gave you a rupee?"

"He put a finger on his lips and closed his eyes when he pa.s.sed the rupee, and thinking the going abroad to eat the air by the mem-sahib of no importance to master I said nothing."