Dermot, who had begun to fear that the supply of food in his haversack might run short, found a plantain tree and gathered a quantity of the fruit.  After a frugal meal he wrote up his notes on the pass through which he had just come and made rough military sketches of it.  Then he strolled among the elephants grazing near Badshah.  They showed no fear or hostility as he passed, and some of the calves evinced a certain amount of curiosity in him.  He even succeeded in making friends with one little animal about a year old, marked with whitish blotches on its forehead and trunk, which allowed him to touch it and, after due consideration, accepted the gift of a peeled banana.  Its mother stood by during the proceeding and regarded the fraternising with her calf dubiously.

Not until dawn on the following day did the herd resume its onward movement.  Dermot was awake even before Badshah’s trunk touched his face to arouse him, and as soon as he was mounted the march began again.  The route lay through the new mountain range; and all day, except for a couple of hours’ halt at noon, the long line wound up a confusing jumble of ravines and passes.  When night fell a plateau covered with tall deodar trees had been reached, and here the elephants rested.

Daybreak on the third morning found Badshah leading the line through a still more bewildering maze of narrow defiles and a forest with such dense foliage that, when the sun was high in the heavens, its rays scarcely lightened the gloom between the tree-trunks.  Dermot wondered how Badshah found his way, for there was no sign of a track, but the elephant moved on steadily and with an air of assured purpose.

At one place he plunged into a deep narrow ravine filled with tangled undergrowth that constantly threatened to tear Dermot from his seat.  Indeed, only the continual employment of the latter’s kukri, with which he hacked at the throttling creepers and clutching thorny branches, saved him.

Darker and gloomier grew the way.  The sides of the nullah closed in until there was scarcely room for the animals to pass, and then Dermot found Badshah had entered a natural tunnel in the mountain side.  The interior was as black as midnight, and the soldier had to lie flat on the elephant’s skull to save his own head.

Suddenly a blinding light made him close his eyes, as Badshah burst out of the darkness of the tunnel into the dazzling glare of the sunshine.

When his rider looked again he found that they were in an almost circular valley completely ringed in by precipitous walls of rock rising straight and sheer for a couple of thousand feet.  Above these cliffs towered giant mountain peaks covered with snow and ice.

At the end of the valley farthest from them was a small lake.  Near the mouth of the tunnel the earth was clothed with long grass and flowering bushes and dotted with low trees.  But elsewhere the ground was dazzlingly white, as though the snow lay deep upon it.  Badshah halted among the trees, and the old elephants passed him and went on in the direction of the lake.  Dermot noticed that they seemed to have suddenly grown feebler and more decrepit.