196 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



SlemaD, and I set out to look for fresh tracks. We 

 took a straight line through the forest for some 

 miles in the direction which we imagined the ele- 

 phant to have taken, and then made a wide sweep 

 round towards the place we had been in the day 

 before. We found nothing, however, and late in the 

 afternoon returned to the house -boat disappointed 

 and weary. 



As we appeared upon the bank, we were greeted by 

 a shout from the other boatmen, almost in chorus. 



" ' It ' fed in Brahim's garden last night." 



Poor Brahim ! There was something very pathetic 

 in his fate. While we had been running through 

 the forest, like questing hounds, in search of the 

 elephant, he had sat quietly in his house to await 

 its coming. 



We unmoored the house-boat, and paddled down- 

 stream to Brahim's house. He was perfectly calm 

 and impersonal, the fact that the damage was in 

 the past instead of being in the future making no 

 difference to him. He took us round his garden 

 as the sun was setting, and, amidst the wreckage 

 of the leaves and branches and the great pit-holes 

 where the enormous feet had sunk into the soil, 

 showed us where some twenty fruit-trees had been 

 destroyed. 



While we were discussing the probability of the 

 elephant's return to the plantation during the night, 

 a couple of rattan-cutters passed by on their way 

 home from their day's work, and informed us that 

 it had in the last hour or two crossed to the other 

 side of the river some three miles lower down. 



