When they had done so from a safe distance, he turned Badshah,
and, to Noreen's surprise, sped off swiftly in the opposite direction.
Suddenly the girl touched his arm quietly.
"Look! I see a wild elephant. There's another! And another!" she whispered.
"Yes; I've come in search of them," he replied in his ordinary tone. "It's
Badshah's herd."
"Is it really? How wonderful! How did you know where to find them?" she
cried, thrilled by the sight of the great beasts all round them and
exclaiming with delight at the solemn little woolly babies, many newly
born. For this was the calving season.
Dermot uttered a peculiar cry that sent the cow-elephants huddling
together, their young hiding under their bodies, while from every
quarter the great tuskers broke out through the undergrowth and came to
him in a mass. Then, as Badshah turned and set off at a rapid pace, the
bull-elephants followed.
When he arrived near the spot in which the man-eater was said to have his
lair, Dermot stopped them all. Despite her protests he tied Noreen firmly
with the _puggri_ to the rope crossing Badshah's pad. Then he drove his
animal into the herd of tuskers, which had crowded together, and divided
them into two bodies. The tiger was reported to lie up in a narrow _nullah_
filled and fringed with low bushes. From the near bank to where Badshah
stood the forest was free from undergrowth, which came to within a score of
yards of the far bank.
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