"
Langur Dass was left alone with his thoughts. Soon he got up and stole
out into the velvet darkness. The mists were over the hills as always.
"Have I followed the tales of your greatness all these years for this?"
he muttered. "It is right for pigs with the hearts of pigs to break
their backs in labour. But you, my Muztagh! Jewel among elephants! King
of the jungle! Thou art of the true breed! Moreover I am minded that thy
heart and mine are one!
"Thou art born ten thousand years after thy time, Muztagh," he went on.
"Thou art of the breed of masters, not of slaves! We are of the same
womb, thou and I. Can I not understand? These are not my people--these
brown men about the fire. I have not thy strength, Muztagh, or I would
be out there with thee! Yet is not the saying that brother shall serve
brother?"
He turned slowly back to the circle of the firelight. Then his brown,
scrawny fingers clenched.
"Am I to desert my brother in his hour of need? Am I to see these brown
pigs put chains around him, in the moment of his power? A king, falling
to the place of a slave? Muztagh, we will see what can be done! Muztagh,
my king, my pearl, my pink baby, for whom I dug grass in the long ago!
Thy Langur Dass is old, and his whole strength is not that of thy trunk,
and men look at him as a worm in the grass. But _hai!_ perhaps thou wilt
find him an ally not to be despised!"
VI
The night had just fallen, moist and heavy over the jungle, when Muztagh
caught up with his herd.
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