Hindu, entertaining this belief, walked into the water, leaving the múrhi mixed with poison on the steps of the ghat. He intended to eat the múrhi and pass out of life after the purifying bath. But Bidhátápúrush[1] ordained otherwise, for as soon as he dipped his head into the water the king's elephant, which had been brought there for a drink, saw the múrhi lying before him, and ate it up. The cobra poison entered its system, and acted so quickly that in a moment the elephant began to give up its life. Dulal, getting out of the river and coming to the spot where he left the múrhi, at once realized that the elephant had deprived him of the means of committing suicide, and in his rage he gave the offender a slap. Now although the slap would have been of no consequence whatever if it had been given to a healthy elephant, when it fell on an animal already tottering on its legs on account of the poison, it had the effect of knocking the enormous beast over. The slap and the fall happening at the same moment, the people on the river side supposed the former to have caused the latter, and gazed at Dulal with wonder and fear. They regarded him as a Hercules and the report of the feat soon spread far and wide, until it reached the king, and produced a mixed feeling of grief and joy; grief for the elephant's death, and joy at the prospect of securing the services of a man able, by a slap, to kill such an animal, and thus by his strength defy the enemies of the Crown.
Dulal was at once brought before the king in a chatúrdola, and the king was surprised to see in the killer of the elephant a skeleton, with blue rings round his eyes, the signs of intemperance and weakness. But he remembered that external appearances are often deceptive and he employed Dulal as his Jamadar, or Head Durwan, on a monthly salary of two hundred rupees. By way of distinction, the name of Hati Sing was given him, and he passed his days lazily but happily with his mother, whom he had in the first dawn of his palmy days taken to live with him. He became the favourite of the
- ↑ The Supreme Being.
