As the party mounted higher and ever higher the big trees fell away behind them until Frank could look down on a sea of foliage stretching away out of sight east and west but bounded on the south by the Plains of India seen vaguely through the shimmering heat-haze.  Up, up they climbed, until far above him he caught glimpses of buildings dotted about among jungle-clad knolls and spurs jutting out from the dark face of the mountains.  And at last as evening shadows began to lengthen they reached a lovely recess in the hills, a deep horse-shoe; and in it an artificially-levelled parade-ground, a rifle-range running up a gully, a few bungalows dotted about among the trees and lines of single-storied barracks enclosed by a loopholed stone wall told Wargrave that he had come to his journey’s end.  This was his place of exile—­this was Ranga Duar.

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!)”