While the forest provided sustenance for the animal, the soldier, accustomed though he was to roughing it, found it advisable to supplement its resources for himself.  But with some ship’s biscuits and a few tins of preserved meat he was ready to face the jungle for days.  Limes and bananas grew freely in the foothills.  Besides his rifle he usually carried a shot gun, for jungle fowl abounded in the forest, and kalej, the black and white speckled pheasant, in the lower hills, and both were excellent eating.

Dermot carried out a thorough survey of the borderland between Bhutan and India, making accurate military sketches and noting the ranges of all positions suitable for defence, artillery, or observation.  Mounted on Badshah’s neck he ascended the steep hills—­elephants are excellent climbers—­and explored every known duar and defile.

At the same time he kept a keen look-out for messengers passing between disloyal elements inside the Indian frontier and possible enemies beyond it.  His knowledge of the language spoken by the Bhuttia settlers within the border, mostly refugees from Bhutan who had fled thither to escape the tyranny and exactions of the officials, enabled him to question the hill-dwellers as to the presence and purpose of any strangers passing through.  He gradually established a species of intelligence department among these colonists, whose dread and hatred of their former rulers have made them very pro-British.  Through them he was able to keep a check on the comings and goings of trans-frontier Bhutanese, who are permitted to enter India freely, although an English subject is not allowed by his own Government to penetrate into Bhutan.  Despite this prohibition—­so Dermot discovered—­many Bengalis had lately passed backwards and forwards across the frontier, a thing hitherto unheard of.  That members of this timorous race should venture to enter such a lawless and savage country as Bhutan and that, having entered it, they lived to come back proved that there must be a strong understanding between many Bhutanese officials and a certain disloyal element in India.

Dermot was returning through the forest from one of his excursions in the hills, when an opportunity was afforded him of repaying the debt that he owed to Badshah for the saving of his life.  They had halted at midday, and the man, seated on the ground with his back to a tree, was eating his lunch, while the elephant had strayed out of sight among the trees in search of food.

Beside Dermot lay his rifle and a double-barrelled shot gun, both loaded.  Having eaten he lit a cheroot and was jotting down in his notebook the information that he had gathered that morning, when a shrill trumpet from the invisible Badshah made him grasp his rifle.  Skilled in the knowledge of the various sounds that elephants make he knew by the brassy note of this that the animal was in deadly fear.  He sprang up to go to his assistance, when Badshah burst through the trees and came towards him at his fastest pace, his drooping ears and tail and outstretched trunk showing that he was terrified.