Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/112

 and listened to the crashing of the elephant through the underwood growing fainter and fainter in the distance, until at last it died away.

"How can one name such ferocity as this?" murmured Pandak Âris, with the aggrieved, half wondering patience of the Oriental, in whose long-enduring soul calamity never awakens more than a certain mild disgust. He looked down very sadly upon the flattened metal which had once been his rice pot, and upon the shapeless lumps of brass deeply embedded in the soil, which had so lately contained the ingredients for his quids.

The two Sâkai, gibbering in the upper branches, shook the boughs on which they were seated, with the agony of the terror which still held them.

"The Old Father was filled with wrath," whispered the elder of the two. He was anxious to speak of the brute that had assailed them with the greatest respect, and above all things to avoid proper names. Both he and his fellow were convinced that the rogue was an incarnation of their former friend and tribesman Pa' Pâtin—the Spike Fish—who had come by his death on the salt lick two years earlier; but they were much too prudent to express this opinion openly, or at such a time. In life, Pa' Pâtin had been a mild enough individual, but he seemed to have developed a temper during his sojourn in the land of shades, and the two Sâkai were not going to outrage his feelings by making any direct allusion to him.

Presently, Pandak Âris climbed down from his