An elephant driven by terror can run for a day without stopping. Quorn was satisfied to hold on for the present. He was pleased that he had not dropped the iron _ankus_. Branches had whipped his forehead; with his free hand he wiped the blood that had streamed in his eyes; it was the blood that prevented him from seeing what was happening along the glade. The Ranee, clinging to the low brass rail in front of the _howdah_ and with her feet jammed under the side-rails, leaned out and touched Quorn between the shoulders. "Do you see?" she shouted. "Fires!" He heard the word and used his sleeve to wipe his eyes. Men--Chandala, he could see them now, lean, rusty-skinned, filthy--had set heaped thorn-wood fires along the glade. They blazed and crackled suddenly as Asoka drew near. They were all on one side of the glade--to the right. Asoka swerved away from them, until he left that glade where his path was blocked by a wall of sputtering flame, and tore along a left-hand opening between the trees in the direction of the river. The Ranee touched Quorn's back again. "Can you turn him?" "No, miss." "I feel sure we are being driven into a trap!" Quorn began using every faculty he had. He had been half-stunned by the whipping branches, but he threw off that sensation--or lack of it--as a fighter in the ring does in the minute's interval between rounds. "Got to think--got to think like hell!" he muttered. "This big bum ain't thinking." He began to encourage Asoka to run, instead of merely sitting still and letting him. Pitching his voice to the familiar note of command he urged him forward--faster!--faster!--until a shadowy, comforting sense of obedience began to invade Asoka's consciousness. It seemed to the elephant now that he had obeyed Quorn in the beginning; obeying him, he had outdistanced horror; he was ready to obey again--presently--presently--maybe--when he should feel quite sure. * * * * * There were fires again now, and more of them, at closer intervals; and through a gap in the trees, ahead, Quorn saw the river gleaming like burnished metal in the morning sun. He saw where the path they were following forked; both branches led toward the river, but the left-hand path was blocked by an inferno of crashing thorn-bush. Certainly the trap was somewhere down the right-hand fork. Men leaped out of the undergrowth with burning fire-brands, taking all risks, setting the grass alight to drive Asoka down the right-hand fairway. And then Bamjee dropped out of a tree. It was like a dream. He was torn, disheveled, he had lost his turban. He stood in the midst of the right-hand path and waved his arms. He shouted. Then he fled into the jungle with two of the Chandala following, hard on his heels.