Looking eagerly back on the track the herd had followed, Jack saw something moving in the wild plum-bushes about three hundred yards away. He looked closer and saw that it was a man, a native. His heart leaped for joy. Whether friends or enemies, perhaps he was about to be loosed from his dreadful position. Now he saw a second man, and the two dark figures, both naked save for a waist-cloth, crept slowly towards him under cover of the bushes. They were a couple of Panthay wood-cutters, felling teak trees on the edge of the ravine. At present the ravine was dry, but in the rainy season an ample flood of water roared along the hollow, a flood which would carry the teak logs down to the big river below. They had heard Jack's cries, and, wondering at the strange sound, had followed up in rear of the flying elephants. Their surprise was immense when they saw a white sahib in the howdah on the elephant's back. But in this part of the country, where white men very rarely came, a white face was regarded with the deepest reverence, and the simple, harmless Panthays at once set about the task of relieving the sahib who seemed unable to rise in his carriage. One of them disappeared at once into the jungle, one remained in the bushes. Jack saw that they were engaged upon some plan, and hoping that it meant his deliverance, he remained silent, and watched eagerly for what was about to happen. Within ten minutes he saw one of the woodmen swarming up a tree some distance ahead, a tree growing beside the well-trodden path which wild beasts had made along the foot of the ravine. Then his companion showed himself among the bushes below and uttered a peculiar cry. The wild elephants stopped feeding at once. Always sensitive to the presence of man, which means danger, they gathered uneasily in a group. Then, following the lead of an immense bull, the patriarch of the herd, they lumbered along the path up the ravine and away from the wood-cutter who had shown himself. Jack saw, to his immense relief and delight, that his elephant would pass directly below the branch where the second Panthay was now perched. As the pad-elephant jogged up, closing the file of the retreating herd, the native, swinging himself from the bough, dropped with the greatest ease and certainty into the howdah. For a moment the Panthay, a short, strong, powerful man, looked upon Jack and his bonds with great surprise. Then he thrust forward the head of his axe, which he had carried with him all the time, and laid the keen edge against the cords which bound Jack to the howdah. In a trice Jack was free. He flung his arms up thankfully, but dropped them again with a groan. They were so stiff that all movement was painful.