When at last they did so there was no longer any thought of work. Instead,
they fled hotfoot to the village to spread their strange news; and next
day, when they went to their work below and explained to the enraged Gurkha
overseer the reason of their absence on the previous day, they told him the
full tale. No story is too incredible for the average native of India, and
the overseer and various forest guards who also heard the narrative fully
believed it and spread it through the jungle villages. It grew as it passed
from tongue to tongue, until the story finally rivalled the most marvellous
of the exploits of Krishna, that wonderful Hindu god.
Meanwhile Dermot and his mammoth companions were climbing steadily higher
and ever higher into the mountains. A panther, disturbed by them in his
sleep beside the bones of a goat, rose growling from the ground and slunk
sullenly away. A pair of brilliantly-plumaged hornbills flew overhead with
a loud and measured beat of wings. _Kalej_ pheasants scuttled away among
the bushes.
But soon the jungle diminished to low scrub and finally fell away behind
the ascending elephants, and they entered a region of rugged, barren
mountains cloven by giant chasms and seamed by rocky _nullahs_ down which
brawling streams rushed or tumbled over falls. A herd of _gooral_--the
little wild goat--rushed away before their coming and sprang in dizzy leaps
down almost sheer precipices.
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