said Little Toomai , `` thou art a big elephant , '' and he wagged his fluffy head , quoting his father . `` The Government may pay for elephants , but they belong to us mahouts . When thou art old , Kala Nag , there will come some rich rajah , and he will buy thee from the Government , on account of thy size and thy manners , and then thou wilt have nothing to do but to carry gold earrings in thy ears , and a gold howdah on thy back , and a red cloth covered with gold on thy sides , and walk at the head of the processions of the King . Then I shall sit on thy neck , O Kala Nag , with a silver ankus , and men will run before us with golden sticks , crying , ` Room for the King 's elephant ! ' That will be good , Kala Nag , but not so good as this hunting in the jungles . '' `` Umph ! '' said Big Toomai . `` Thou art a boy , and as wild as a buffalo-calf . This running up and down among the hills is not the best Government service . I am getting old , and I do not love wild elephants . Give me brick elephant lines , one stall to each elephant , and big stumps to tie them to safely , and flat , broad roads to exercise upon , instead of this come-and-go camping . Aha , the Cawnpore barracks were good . There was a bazaar close by , and only three hours ' work a day . '' Little Toomai remembered the Cawnpore elephant-lines and said nothing . He very much preferred the camp life , and hated those broad , flat roads , with the daily grubbing for grass in the forage reserve , and the long hours when there was nothing to do except to watch Kala Nag fidgeting in his pickets . What Little Toomai liked was to scramble up bridle paths that only an elephant could take ; the dip into the valley below ; the glimpses of the wild elephants browsing miles away ; the rush of the frightened pig and peacock under Kala Nag 's feet ; the blinding warm rains , when all the hills and valleys smoked ; the beautiful misty mornings when nobody knew where they would camp that night ; the steady , cautious drive of the wild elephants , and the mad rush and blaze and hullabaloo of the last night 's drive , when the elephants poured into the stockade like boulders in a landslide , found that they could not get out , and flung themselves at the heavy posts only to be driven back by yells and flaring torches and volleys of blank cartridge . Even a little boy could be of use there , and Toomai was as useful as three boys . He would get his torch and wave it , and yell with the best . But the really good time came when the driving out began , and the Keddah -- that is , the stockade -- looked like a picture of the end of the world , and men had to make signs to one another , because they could not hear themselves speak . Then Little Toomai would climb up to the top of one of the quivering stockade posts , his sun-bleached brown hair flying loose all over his shoulders , and he looking like a goblin in the torch-light .
And as soon as there was a lull you could hear his high-pitched yells of encouragement to Kala Nag , above the trumpeting and crashing , and snapping of ropes , and groans of the tethered XXXXX .
O elephants head manners men nothing silver torch use world