When they arrived at the elephant lines, the natives were in a fever of unrest. Mahadua had answered the gong summons and was waiting, his small, wizened face carrying myriad wrinkles of excited interest. Moti's mahout was squatted at the tamarind to which she had been chained, the broken chain in his lap wet from tears that were streaming down the old fellow's cheeks.
"Look you, sahib!" he cried. "The chain has been cut with a file."
"She is down in the cane," a native answered; "I have just come from there."
"She has gone up into the sal forest," another maintained. "I was coming down the hill and had to flee from the path, for she is _must_."
"Huzoor, the elephant has stripped the roof from my house," a third, a native from Picklapara village, declared. "All the village has been laid flat and a hundred people killed. Will the sircar pay me for the loss of my house, for surely it is a government elephant and we are poor people?"
Finnerty turned to the shikari. "Mahadua, which way has Moti gone?"
"These men are all liars, sahib--it is their manner of speech. Moti went near to Picklapara and the people all ran away; but she is now up on the hills."
The mahout stopped his droning lament long enough to say: "Sahib, Moti is not to be blamed, for she is drunk; she knows not where evil begins, because a man came in the night and gave her a ball of _bhang_ wrapped up in sweets."
"We've got to capture the old girl before she kills some natives," Finnerty declared. "If you chaps don't mind a wait, I'll get things ready and you'll see better sport than killing something."
First the major had some "foot tacks" brought. They were sharp-pointed steel things with a broad base, looking like enormous carpet tacks. Placed on the path, if Moti stepped on one she would probably come in to the keddah to have her foot dressed. Four Moormen, natives of the Ceylon hills, were selected. These men were entitled to be called _panakhans_, for each one had noosed by the leg a wild elephant that had been captured, and very lithe and brave they looked as they stepped out, a rawhide noose over the shoulder of each. A small army of assistants were also assembled, and Raj Bahadar, a huge bull elephant.