The dense foliage
had hidden the battered, shapeless bodies from the eyes of the soaring
vultures high up in the blue sky, otherwise nothing but scattered bones
would have remained. Now the task of scavenging was left to the insects.
Over twenty corpses were found. When an angry elephant has wreaked his rage
on a man the result is something that is difficult to recognise as the
remains of a human being. So out of the twenty, the attackers shot by
Dermot were the only ones whose bodies were in a fit state to be examined.
But they afforded no clue to the identity of the mysterious assailants. The
men appeared to have been low-caste Hindus of the coolie class. They
carried nothing on their persons except a little food--a few broken
_chupatis_, a handful of coarse grain, an onion or two, and a few
_cardamoms_ tied up in a bit of cloth. Each had a powder-flask and a small
bag with some spherical bullets in it hung on a string passed over one
shoulder. The weapons found were mostly old Tower muskets, the marks on
which showed that at one time they had belonged to various native regiments
in the service of the East India Company. But there were two or three
fairly modern rifles of French or German make.
These latter Dermot tied on his elephant, and, as there was nothing further
to be learned here, he led the way to the other spot which he wished to
visit.
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