When all seven were quiet the herald proclaimed that wagers might now be
laid on the apes, the survivor of the seven to be the winner. Each had a
different color painted on his iron ring: blue, green, red, yellow and so
on. The spectators appeared to make bets.
Then when the arena was clear between the elephant and the baboons and
beyond them, the mahout spoke to his charge, the elephant inserted his
trunk through the opened lid of a crate of ducks, grasped a duck by the
neck, lifted it out, swung it, and hurled it at the hanging apes. It
hurtled through the air, napping its wings in vain, and passed between the
baboons, they grabbing for it as it shot by, it falling far beyond them on
the sand.
A roar of appreciative yells rose from the spectators.
The elephant threw another duck and another. The third came within reach
of one ape. He seized it and bit it savagely, tearing it to pieces with
vicious glee. Its impact set him swinging.
Duck after duck was hurled till another baboon caught and rent another.
This went on till two of the swinging apes came within grasping distance
of each other. At once they grappled, bit each other and fought till one
was killed.
It made a queer spectacle; the crates of quacking ducks, the thin-legged,
blackskinned, turbaned _mahout_, the wickedly comprehending little
elephant, the chattering baboons, the ducks hurtling through the air, and
running about the sand all over the arena, for many of them fell and
escaped alive, the yelling spectators of the upper tiers, the mildly
amused parties in the Imperial and senatorial boxes, the blaze of sun over
everything.
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