CHAPTER VI A BORDER OUTPOST "What a beautiful spot!" thought Frank as he gazed entranced at the scenery. "I've never seen anything like it. It looks like Heaven after the ugliness of Rohar. And how delightfully cool it is, too, up in the mountains! Well, with this climate and good shooting in the forest below life won't be as dreadful as I thought. I wish poor Violet were here out of the heat and glare. How she'd love all this beauty, these trees, these gardens, the glorious mountains!" He sighed as he thought of the woman who was so far away. "_Huzoor_, that is the Mess" broke in the voice of his _mahout_, as he pointed to a long, red-tiled building half-hidden among the trees a few hundred feet above them. To reach it they had to pass a large, well-built stone bungalow, two-storied, unlike all the others and standing in a lovely garden glowing with the vivid hues of the flowers, the flaming red of huge bushes of bougainvillea and poinsettia. Frank, glancing towards it, was about to ask the _mahout_ who lived in it when he started in horror and cried to the man: "Stop! Stop your animal! Look there!" And he snatched at his rifle. For on the farther side of the house a huge tusker elephant in the garden stood over a little European boy about four years old, who was sprawling almost under the huge feet. And high above its head the brute held in its curved trunk a younger child, a girl with long golden curls, as if about to dash it to the ground. As Frank grasped the rifle the _mahout_, who had turned at his cry, seized the barrel and said with a smile: "_Durro mut_, Sahib! Do not fear, sir. Those are Durro Mut Sahib's babies and the elephant is their playmate." And as he spoke Wargrave saw the elder child spring up from the ground and beat the great animal's legs with his tiny hands, crying: "_Mujh-ko bhi_, Badshah! _Mujh-ko bhi! Uth! Uth!_ (Me too, Badshah! Me too! Take me up!)" And the baby held aloft was crowing in glee and kicking its fat little legs frantically. The elephant lowered it tenderly to the ground and picked up the boy in its stead and lifted him into the air, while he laughed and clapped his hands. The two _mahouts_ raised their palms respectfully to their foreheads and cried to their animals: "_Salaam kuro_! (Salute!)" And the two trunks were lifted together in the _Salaamut_, the royal salute given to Kings and Viceroys. Frank's _mahout_ explained. "_Gharib Parwar_ (Protector of the Poor), the pagan ignorant Hindus around here say that the elephant is a god. Aye, and that his master, Durro Mut Sahib, is one too. _That's_ like enough. Well, Allah alone knows the truth of everything. But those two are more than mere man and animal, that is certain. _Mul, Moti_! (Go on, Pearl!)"