No More Learning

The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa,
Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear,
looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one
having business elsewhere.

"Hi! ho! Come back you! " shouted Chihun. "Come back and put me on your
neck, misborn mountain! Return, splendor of the hillsides! Adornment of
all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe off your forefoot! "

Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a
rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew
what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.

"None of your nonsense with me," said he. "To your pickets, devil-son! "

"Hrrump!
" said Moti Guj, and that was all--that and the forebent ears.

Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick,
and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other elephants who
had just set to work.

Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with
a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man
the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the
clearing and "Hrrumphing" him into his veranda. Then he stood outside
the house, chuckling to himself and shaking all over with the fun of it,
as an elephant will.

"We'll thrash him," said the planter. "He shall have the finest
thrashing ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of
chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty. "

Kala Nag--which means Black Snake--and Nazim were two of the biggest
elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer the
graver punishment, since no man can beat an elephant properly.

They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they
sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had
never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did
not intend to begin a new experience. So he waited, waving his head from
right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side
where a blunt tusk could sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain
was the badge of his authority; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti
Guj at the last minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the
chain out for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did
not feel fighting fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing
alone with his ears cocked.

That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to
his amateur inspection of the clearing.