“Ha! ha! Master Thucydides Thorn, you are evidently a second Don Quixote, bent on adventures, or you would not start with a square yard of black sticking-plaster, bound ‘with red rags to look like blood,’ hanging round your neck! That is something like business. Ha! ha! ha!” It was Dr. Pinfold who thus chatted and laughed. He had come to see Io start on her expedition, and was rejoiced to find his favourite looking already in much better health. Io’s spirits had rebounded after their late depression, the cause of that depression having been suddenly removed. She looked bright and quite ready to enjoy herself as she gazed up laughingly at the elephant, wondering how she should ever reach the height of his back.
“Make the brute kneel to his lady, as in duty bound!” cried the doctor to the kahaut [driver], who was perched on the elephant’s neck. The man shook his head, and jabbered something unintelligible to most of the party.
“He says that this elephant is not trained to kneel,” said Oscar, coming up at the moment. “We have a short elephant-ladder which we will carry with us.—Io, my love, are you ready to mount?”
With the aid of her husband and the doctor Io very soon reached the howdah, and smiled down on those who had helped her to attain her lofty position.
“A little queen on her throne!” cried the doctor.
“Please help Maha too,” said Io. But the active little Karen needed no help; she clambered up the steps like a cat.
“Now, knight of the sticking-plaster, let us see you on your tat,” said Pinfold gaily.
“This is not sticking-plaster; do you not see the labels?” cried Thud. “This is what I am going to stow my specimens in—this is the nucleus of a museum.”
“You’ll have some rare treasures in it,” said the merry doctor. “I hope you’ve left a pocket for bandages and salve, in case you come to grief in your specimen-hunting.—Coldstream, how do you travel?”
“On foot. I like the exercise,” replied Oscar. “We shall proceed but slowly. I can easily keep up with the elephant.”
“But hardly with the tat. Ha! ha! ha!—Mind, Thud, how you get up; the brute looks as if he were given to biting. No, no, don’t venture behind him; he puts back his ears—he’s certain to kick.”
“Hold him, will you? and don’t laugh!” cried Thucydides Thorn. “I don’t like the looks of the beast.”
Awkwardly the heavy lad mounted, secretly regretting the accident to Lightfoot, which had prevented his having the chance of a better mount. The Burmese tat might have tried the mettle of a better rider than Thud. First, Ma Ping—such was his name—determined not to stir from the spot. In vain Thud tried to coax him to go on, then cautiously touched him up with the whip, Pinfold looking on and laughing.
“Give it him, Thud!” cried the doctor, bestowing on the tat a gratuitous whack with his own umbrella.
The unexpected blow from behind had instantaneous effect. Ma Ping suddenly bolted off at a pace which almost unseated his rider. Off came Thud’s pagri and hat; but he clung desperately to the pommel with which the native saddle was happily furnished, without the aid of which the youth would certainly have come to the ground.
“‘Away went Gilpin, who but he!’” exclaimed Pinfold in high glee; indeed, no one acquainted with Cowper’s poem could have seen Thud at that moment without being reminded of the “citizen of credit and renown.” The tat’s rapid motion had twisted round Thud’s black case, and, hanging by its red strings, it streamed like a pennon behind him.
The tat was, however, brought up in its career by a cactus hedge; and Thud, panting and frightened but unhurt, awaited the coming up of the elephant and the rest of the party.
Thud made another attempt to arrange that Maha should change places with himself; the tat would suit a Karen, he declared, and he would prefer a howdah. But to this arrangement Oscar decidedly objected. He again gave his brother-in-law the alternative of remaining in Moulmein, but to this suggestion the lad would not listen. The specimen case was twisted round to its proper position, the hat and dusty pagri replaced, and Thud proceeded on his tat in rather a sulky condition.
Io enjoyed her ride; everything was to the youthful Englishwoman so strange and new. The party passed by paddy-fields, in which men and women were working together. The peasants stopped their labours to stare in wonder at a fair lady, who in return gazed down with curiosity upon them.
“O Oscar, look at that boy smoking a cigar three times the size of Dr. Pinny’s, with another stuck in each ear! How strange everything looks to my English eyes! What wonderfully tall grass we are approaching! It would almost hide my elephant; the tat will be lost in it altogether. Graceful bamboos! with what dignity they raise aloft their feathery crowns; and surely that is a banyan, that tree of which I have read so often, that looks like a dark green roof resting on gnarled brown pillars, with big roots, like snakes, curling at their bases. This bird’s-eye view of a new world is very amusing. What a flight of parrots—lovely green, screaming parrots! And see that bird with flashing blue wings—such an exquisite metallic tint! Certainly, if our English birds excel those of the East in song, these far excel ours in plumage.”
With such cheerful chat Io Coldstream beguiled the way. Oscar encouraged his wife to talk, gathered for her wild flowers wherever he could see any remarkable for beauty, and bade Io employ Maha’s deft fingers in making garlands for the howdah. He told stories of hunting adventures, and promised his wife specimens of birds to take home, as he had not forgotten to bring his gun.
“I think that my Oscar is getting back his spirits; the change is already doing him good,” such was the hope which brightened everything to Io. She was almost sorry when the first stage of the journey came to an end, and the party halted to rest their animals, and themselves partake of a meal which they found ready c............