Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn for all
that. Chihun gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him under the
chin, and Chihun’s little baby cooed to him after work was over, and
Chihun’s wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by
instinct, as Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions.
He wanted the light of his universe back again—the drink and the
drunken slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses.
None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had
wandered along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his
own caste and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted with it
past all knowledge of the lapse of time.
The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa.
Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung
clear, looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away,
as one having business elsewhere.
“Hi! ho! Come back, you,” shouted Chihun. “Come back and put me on
your neck, misborn mountain! Return, splendor of the hillsides!
Adornment of all India, heave to, or I’ll bang every toe off your
fat forefoot!”
Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with
a rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun
knew what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high
words.
“None of your nonsense with me,” said he. “To your pickets,
devil-son.”
“Hrrump!” said Moti Guj, and that was all—that and the forebent
ears.
Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a
toothpick, and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other
elephants, who had just set to work.
Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out
with a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white
man the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across
the clearing and “Hrrumping” him into his veranda. Then he stood
outside the house chuckling to himself, and shaking all over with
the fun of it, as an elephant will.
“We’ll thrash him,” said the planter. “He shall have the finest
thrashing ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve
foot of chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty blows.”
Kala Nag—which means Black Snake—and Nazim were two of the biggest
elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer
the graver punishments, since no man can beat an elephant properly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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