“Only a tiger, sir?” repeated Wargrave.  “But it sounded close by.”

“Yes, but Badshah will look after us.  Don’t worry”; and the Colonel turned over and fell asleep.

It was a little time, however, before Frank followed his example, and he had his rifle under his hand when he did.  But the dark bulk of the elephant towering over them comforted him as he sank to sleep.

A couple of hours later they were on their way again.  It was broad daylight before they emerged from the jungle.  It seemed strange to be out once more in the wide-stretching, open and cultivated plains and to look back on the great forest and, beyond it, to the mountains towering to the sky.  Before them lay the flat expanse of the hedgeless, fertile fields dotted here and there with clusters of trimly-built huts or thick groves of bamboos and seamed with the lines of deep nullahs, the tops of the trees in them barely showing above the level and marking their winding course.

The dak bungalow at Madpur Duar was soon reached, a single-storied building with a couple of trees shading the well behind it and a group of elephants and their mahouts.  On the verandah Benson and his daughter were standing, the girl dressed in a khaki drill coat and skirt over breeches and soft leather gaiters, and waving a welcome to Badshah’s riders.

After a hurried breakfast the latter were ready to start for the day’s sport.  By then a line of ten female elephants, the tallest carrying a howdah, the rest only their pads, was drawn up before the bungalow; and at a word from their mahouts their trunks went up in the air and the animals trumpeted in salute as the party came out on the verandah.

“We borrowed Mr. Carter’s and the Settlement Officer’s elephants for the beat,” said Miss Benson, as, wearing a big pith sunhat and carrying a double-barrelled .400 cordite rifle, she led the way down the verandah steps.

It had been arranged that she was to take Wargrave with her in her howdah, while her father accompanied Colonel Dermot on Badshah.  Her big elephant knelt down and a ladder was laid against its side, up which she climbed, followed by the subaltern.  When all were mounted she led the way across the plain.  Although the ground was everywhere level and just there uncultivated the elephants tailed off in single file as is the habit of their kind, wild or domesticated, each stepping with precise care into the footprints of the one in front of it.  Here in the Plains the heat was intense; and Wargrave, shading his eyes from the blinding glare, thought enviously of the coolness up in the mountains that he had left.  As they moved along Muriel explained to him how the beat was to be conducted.