"I thought you didn't know anything about elephants," said Spence.

"He doesn't," Gita quipped. "It just means please in Hindi."

Adjani smiled and spread his hands. "It worked, didn't it?"

"Well, who first?" asked Spence.

"It is your elephant, sahib. You go first." Adjani patted him on the shoulder.

"All right, cowards. I will. All you do is grab an ear and…" Spence stepped up on the elephant's knee and took hold of its right ear and swung himself up behind the head. "Nothing to it."

Adjani followed and climbed into the howdah. Then it was Gita's turn. He stood trembling on the ground. "Well, come on. You can't walk all the way with us and we can't leave you behind for the goondas. You might as well get it over with."

"It is easy for you, Spencer Reston. But I have a wife and five beautiful daughters. A man must think of his family."

"Come on, Gita, we're wasting time." Already the shadows of the forest were moving across the road and in among the trees, deepening in shades of blue.

Spence reached down his hand. "Come on; your people have been doing this for a million years at least."

Gita bit his lower lip and handed up his bundles. Then he clasped Spence's hand and scrambled up. He did not stop scrambling until he was in the howdah, clutching the sides.

"All aboard?" called Spence. "Here we go. What's the word, Adjani?"

"Mehrhani se. "

At the command the elephant rose up and began walking. Spence found that she was easily steered with a gentle kick behind the ear-with the right foot to turn right, with the left foot for left. A kick with both feet simultaneously made the elephant go faster.

Off they trundled, swaying like kings of old aboard their fabled mounts with tusks sheathed in gold. Spence found the ride exciting.

"This is what I call going in style!" he shouted over his shoulder to his passengers.

"Now do you believe?" Adjani yelled back.

"I'm beginning to," Spence said to himself. "I think I'm beginning to."

15

… TOWARD MORNING SPENCE WAS awakened by the sound of thunder in the hills. As the sun came up, a leaden rain started leaning out of low murky clouds. The three stirred themselves and sat huddled under the banyan tree that had sheltered them through the night. They munched soft overripe mm goes and sweet pears Gita had bought for them in the let marketplace and waited for the rain to stop.

"It might go all day," remarked Gita sagely. "It often does this time of year. We are nearing the rainy season."

"If it doesn't stop soon we'll have to go on anyway," said Spence. He had begun feeling more and more uncomfortable about Ari-a feeling somehow connected with his fainting speIl the day before. He had a strong sense of danger where she was concerned, and this sense made him impatient to reach hers soon as possible.

They waited half an hour more; Spence, leaning first against one of the trees' trunks and then another, was soon pacing like+ caged bear. "It isn't going to stop," he announced, arriving at the end of his patience. "Let's go on."

Gita made a face like a man smelling rotten eggs. He heaved his round shoulders and shuffled to his feet. "Don't worry, Gita," remarked Adjani. "The bath will do us all good."

They stepped out into the sullen rain and untethered Simba who also had been crushing the pulpy pears in her massive jaws. The elephant greeted her new masters with a rousing trump and examined each one and his pockets as she knelt and let them board her. Then they were off, heading northward, climbing slowly upward toward the mountains.

Spence saw the land through the hanging white mists and noted that it had changed a great deal since Calcutta. The jungle had become forest of a different type; the greens were deeper tending more toward blue in the misty rain. Sown in among lower trees he spotted tall pines shooting up out of the foliage around them and he could smell their scent in the air. Spence tough used they had risen several thousand feet in altitude already, the climb had been so gradual as not to be noticed. Nevertheless, he sensed a difference in the air-it seemed hasher and last night had been a little cooler than he remembered since coming to India.

They rode at a good pace for nearly an hour, each one cloaked in his own thoughts, like Gita wrapped in his turban, trying to keep out the rain which slowly seeped into everything anyway.

They came upon a small stream running across the road. Simba waded into it and then stopped and drank. She stood splashing her trunk in the water and blowing bubbles before squirting water into her mouth.

Spence let her have her fun; he did not know when they would be able to stop for a drink again. As the elephant stepped out of the stream he felt a quiver run through the animal like an electric shock and she froze instantly in mid-step, trunk reaching out, wavering as she sifted the air for a scent.

Up ahead the road wound sharply around a bend and was hidden behind a wall of forest. Spence could sense nothing that would make her react in such a way, but he knew better than to doubt an elephant's instinct.

"What is it? Why have we stopped?" asked Gita. His soggy turban dropped around his ears and eyebrows making him look like a waif wearing his father's clothes.

"Shhh!" hissed Spence. He gave a chop with his hand to cut off further discussion. He nudged Simba gently with his feet and she went slowly forward, with a ponderous, silent grace. He marveled at how smoothly and quietly the creature could move when she wanted to.

They crept toward the bend in the road.

Spence lay down on the elephant's head and peered ahead as far as he could as they came around the trees. He saw in the,,ad,, few objects of undetermined nature and then he looked down and saw something he recognized well: a severed human arm, thumb missing, lay directly in the middle of the road. Bloody and pale, it had been washed clean by the rain. White bone gleamed painfully from the torn end, and the arm itself seemed to indicate a warning. Halt! It said. Go no further!

Lifting his eyes from the grizzly memento he saw the lions.

There were two of them-a male and a female, both wet and draggled by the rain. The big male was tearing at a carcass splayed in the center of the road while the female sat on her haunches waiting her turn to feed. The carcass had been worried beyond recognition-as had the others he now saw littering the area-but Spence, with a sudden sickness in his stomach, knew what they were. The shreds of clothing, the shoes and sandals, hat and gun told him all.

The lion, sensing the intruders for the first time, glared up defiantly and loosed a snarl that turned blood to water. Simba stood her ground, raising her trunk high overhead and in a tight curl. The lion growled more fiercely and then seized up the carcass with a snap of its jaws and dragged it off across the road into the forest. The tawny lioness followed with the miffed air of snubbed royalty.

"That was close," said Spence. He grimly looked around the scene of carnage. "I thought they were going to challenge us."

"Lions are cowards," remarked Gita, "though I was feeling none too brave myself. Still, not many will go against an elephant. We must be near Jaldapara."

"What's that?"

"Many, many years ago there was a great wildlife sanctuary called Jaldapara. I have heard that there are still lions there." "Apparently they abound."

"This is what is left of the governor's party," observed Adjani. "I don't see anything to save. We'll have to report this to the authorities in Darjeeling."

"I wonder if there were any survivors." Spence urged the elephant onward, stopping only once to direct her to retrieve an official cap which had been worn by one of the governor's aides.