Elephant dance (1937)

Still Melkote. Melkote Oct. igth. Darlings, ... It was almost too fairy-like for me to describe. We left camp by starlight. By dawn and the light of the morning star we were rolling over the plains, and somehow the great thundering dawn above us and the great stretching plain before us and, dwarfed to the finest dry-point etching between them, ourselves on our fantastic beasts, and the delicate leaping buck, were like nothing but a Persian miniature painting out of a fairy story. Black Buck The buck didn't know whether to be frightened. They sprayed from the hollow and capped the rise, every delicate line from hoof to head and horn flung up sharp and clear. And we rolled on after them for the sheer joy of seeing them leap again, up, up into the sky — beautiful curves shivering like glass the first rays of the sun. The lovely creatures didn't know what to think. They had never seen elephants before ! Irawatha, our Kala Nag, was very ill. He stood doubly chained by his forefeet and hind feet in a place by himself, and no one was allowed to come near him. He looked terrible and his eyes were wild with pain. He could not keep still. His head was never still but nodding and nodding and swaying and swaying, up and down and from side to side, and every once in 80 [facing irawatha 'musth'