The new elephants strained at their ropes , and squealed and trumpeted from time to time , and he could hear his mother in the camp hut putting his small brother to sleep with an old , old song about the great God Shiv , who once told all the animals what they should eat . It is a very soothing lullaby , and the first verse says : Shiv , who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow , Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago , Gave to each his portion , food and toil and fate , From the King upon the guddee to the Beggar at the gate . All things made he -- Shiva the Preserver . Mahadeo ! Mahadeo ! He made all -- Thorn for the camel , fodder for the kine , And mother 's heart for sleepy head , O little son of mine ! Little Toomai came in with a joyous tunk-a-tunk at the end of each verse , till he felt sleepy and stretched himself on the fodder at Kala Nag 's side . At last the elephants began to lie down one after another as is their custom , till only Kala Nag at the right of the line was left standing up ; and he rocked slowly from side to side , his ears put forward to listen to the night wind as it blew very slowly across the hills . The air was full of all the night noises that , taken together , make one big silence -- the click of one bamboo stem against the other , the rustle of something alive in the undergrowth , the scratch and squawk of a half-waked bird -LRB- birds are awake in the night much more often than we imagine -RRB- , and the fall of water ever so far away . Little Toomai slept for some time , and when he waked it was brilliant moonlight , and Kala Nag was still standing up with his ears cocked . Little Toomai turned , rustling in the fodder , and watched the curve of his big back against half the stars in heaven , and while he watched he heard , so far away that it sounded no more than a pinhole of noise pricked through the stillness , the `` hoot-toot '' of a wild elephant . All the elephants in the lines jumped up as if they had been shot , and their grunts at last waked the sleeping mahouts , and they came out and drove in the picket pegs with big mallets , and tightened this rope and knotted that till all was quiet . One new elephant had nearly grubbed up his picket , and Big Toomai took off Kala Nag 's leg chain and shackled that elephant fore-foot to hind-foot , but slipped a loop of grass string round Kala Nag 's leg , and told him to remember that he was tied fast . He knew that he and his father and his grandfather had done the very same thing hundreds of times before . Kala Nag did not answer to the order by gurgling , as he usually did . He stood still , looking out across the moonlight , his head a little raised and his ears spread like fans , up to the great folds of the Garo hills . `` Tend to him if he grows restless in the night , '' said Big Toomai to Little Toomai , and he went into the hut and slept . Little Toomai was just going to sleep , too , when he heard the coir string snap with a little `` tang , '' and Kala Nag rolled out of his pickets as slowly and as silently as a cloud rolls out of the mouth of a valley . Little Toomai pattered after him , barefooted , down the road in the moonlight , calling under his breath , `` Kala Nag ! Kala Nag !
Take me XXXXX you , O Kala Nag ! ''
after at by down in of that till to with