"And Asoka, miss? You ain't going to have him executed, nohow, are you? Not whatever the outcome?" "This is his chance, too, I think," she answered. Quorn thumped Asoka with the _ankus_. "Do you hear that, you big bum? Strut your stuff and think up your own alibi!" The hell that was to pay began when they had just crossed the wide lower ford of Narada River. The advance-guard, laughing and chatting, drew abreast of a swamp where the reeds were ten feet higher than a man's head. The road they were to follow led around that swamp and then eastward along the river bank. On the right was a porphyry cliff with enormous bowlders at its foot, and ahead was the road to the railway station, two days' march away. * * * * * Asoka was the first to fore-sense trouble; he curled up his precious trunk out of harm's way and began shaking his ears. Quorn hardly had time to get a firm grip with his knees when one of the escort threw up his hand and shouted. With no other warning at all, from two directions--from the bowlders and the reeds--at least a hundred water-buffalo came charging down on them in one of those blind, irresistible rushes in which one mind, one terror governs a whole herd and whelms whatever stands in front of it. The horsemen scattered and Asoka plunged into the reeds, the Ranee laughing gayly as she clung to the _howdah_--until she saw a naked man on a sort of raft open the reeds with his hands, leap carefully from clump to clump of roots and jab at the elephant's rump with a spear. Asoka screamed with anger. Three more naked spearmen tried to work their way toward him, but he plunged again out of the swamp at almost the place where he had entered and proceeded to remove himself from that scene at a speed that would have made a horse a Derby winner. "Hang on, miss!" Quorn cried. Fear takes hold of elephants as suddenly as typhoons smite the sea. Frenzy as well as fear took hold of Asoka, arousing his whole strength, his entire speed, blinding him, deafening him to Quorn's voice, making him almost as unconscious as a landslide or a monster in a dream. He crashed into the jungle, smashed the _howdah_ roof against a branch, thundered through undergrowth, slid down _nullahs_ like an avalanche with earth-banks breaking under him, charged through clinging clumps of thorn-brush, floundered into a wallow where the buffalo had lain, came out of it smothered with mud and butted, squealing like a bucking pony, against a tree that blocked his path. The tree cracked, splintered and fell. Then, glimpsing through his blood-shot eyes a glade beyond a bamboo thicket, he crashed through the thicket and began to lay the long leagues underfoot.