4 THE KING'S MAHOUT 



departments, how much profitable trade might not, 

 indeed, and readily, be diverted to the boats of Lee 

 Boon Jew & Son ! 



But Choo proved a sore disappointment to his 

 ambitious father. He had, it is true, given all of 

 his boyhood and much of his young manhood to 

 Lee's boats, and in fact, was accounted among the 

 shrewdest traders and most skilled boatmen on 

 the river. There were even those who thought the 

 son more astute than his non-talkative but deep 

 thinking Cantonese parent. At all events, Choo 

 attained to such efficiency that his father sent him 

 frequently up the river on the more important 

 mission of trading for rattan and bamboo. And 

 it was on one of these trips inland that Choo 

 crossed the trail of the elephant catchers, and fell 

 under the influence which was to govern, not to 

 say guide, his life's star thereafter and forever 

 more. 



From that day, it seemed to Choo that boats 

 were the most uninteresting things in all the 

 world, and trading the least ambitious of all pro- 

 fessions. He felt the spell of the elephant catch- 

 ers, the silent mystery of the jungle, the excite- 

 ment of the chase; and then and there he deter- 

 mined that an elephant catcher he would be. Choo 

 was naturally of an adventuresome temperament, 

 which is decidedly unusual in one of his race ; but 



