His excuses were cut short.

“Choop raho! (Be silent!) You are not fit to have charge of an animal,” cried the indignant officer, picking up and examining the cruel weapon.  The sharp points of the nails were stained with blood, and morsels of skin and flesh adhered to them.  Dermot felt a strong inclination to thrash the brutal mahout with the unarmed end of the bamboo, but, restraining himself, he turned to the elephant.  With the instinct of its kind it was scraping a little pile of dust together with its toes, snuffing it up in its trunk and blowing it on the bleeding cuts on its lacerated head.

“You poor beast!  You mustn’t do that.  We’ll find something better for you,” said the Major compassionately.

He called across the parade ground to his white-clad Mussulman butler, who was looking down at him from the bungalow.

“Bring that fruit off my table,” he said in Hindustani.  “Also the little medicine chest and a bowl of water.”

When the servant had brought them Dermot approached the elephant.

“Khubbadar—­(take care)—­sahib!” cried a coolie, the mahout’s assistant.  “He is suffering and angry.  He may do you harm.”

But, while the rebuked mahout glared malevolently and inwardly hoped that the animal might kill him, Dermot walked calmly toward it, holding out his hand with the fruit.  The elephant, regarding him nervously and suspiciously out of its little eyes, shifted uneasily from foot to foot, and at first shrank from him.  But, as the officer stood quietly in front of it, it stretched out its trunk and smelled the extended hand.  Then it touched the arm and felt it up to the shoulder, on which it let the tip of the trunk rest for a few seconds.  At last it seemed satisfied that the white man was a friend and did not intend to hurt it.

During the ordeal Dermot had never moved; although there was every reason to fear that the animal, either from sheer nervousness or from resentment at the ill-treatment that it had just received, might attack him and trample him to death.  Indeed, many tame elephants, being unused to Europeans, will not allow white men to approach them.  So the Hindu coolie stood trembling with fright, while the havildar and the butler were alarmed at their sahib’s peril.

But Dermot coolly peeled a banana and placed it in the elephant’s mouth.  The gift was tried and approved by the huge beast, which graciously accepted the rest of the fruit.  Then the Major said to it in the mahouts’ tongue: 

“Buth! (Lie down!)”

The elephant slowly sank down to the ground and allowed the Major to examine its head, which was badly lacerated by the spikes.  Dermot cleansed the wounds thoroughly and applied an antiseptic to them.  The animal bore it patiently and seemed to recognise that it had found a friend; for, when it rose to its feet again, it laid its trunk almost caressingly on Dermot’s shoulder.