3
se to credit the strangest story of what wild animals will do. Of all the swarming herds of wild elephants in the Terai, the Mysore, or the Ceylon jungles no man, white or black, has ever seen one that had died a natural death. Yet many have watched them climbing up the great mountain rampart of the Himalayas towards regions where human foot never followed. The Death Place of the Elephants is a legend in which all jungle races firmly believe, but no man has ever found it. The mammoths live a century and a half--but the time comes when each of them must die. Yet no human eye watches its death agony.
Those who know elephants best will most readily credit the strangest tales of their doings. And there are men--white men--whose power over wild beasts and wilder fellow men outstrips the novelist's imagination, the true tale of whose doings no resident in a civilised land would believe.
GORDON CASSERLY.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE SECRET MISSION 3
II.--A ROGUE ELEPHANT 20
III.--A GIRL OF THE TERAI 35
IV.--THE MADNESS OF BADSHAH 59
V.--THE DEATH-PLACE 79
VI.--A DRAMATIC INTRODUCTION 95
VII.--IN THE RAJAH'S PALACE 117
VIII.--A BHUTTIA RAID 137
IX.--THE RESCUE OF NOREEN 155
X.--A STRANGE HOME-COMING 175
XI.--THE MAKING OF A GOD 193
XII.--THE LURE OF THE HILLS 213
XIII.--THE PLEASURE COLONY 231
XIV.--THE TANGLED SKEIN OF LOVE 248
XV.--THE FEAST OF THE GODDESS KALI 267
XVI.--THE PALACE OF DEATH 286
XVII.--A TRAP 309
XVIII.--THE CAT AND THE TIGER 330
XIX.--TEMPEST 351
XX.--THE GOD OF THE ELEPHANTS 377
CHAPTER I
THE SECRET MISSION
"The letters, sahib," said the post orderly, blocking up the doorway of the bungalow.
Kevin Dermot put down his book as the speaker, a Punjaubi Moha