And in this way , talking and wrangling and splashing through the rivers , they made their first march to a sort of receiving camp for the new elephants . But they lost their tempers long before they got there . Then the elephants were chained by their hind legs to their big stumps of pickets , and extra ropes were fitted to the new elephants , and the fodder was piled before them , and the hill drivers went back to Petersen Sahib through the afternoon light , telling the plains drivers to be extra careful that night , and laughing when the plains drivers asked the reason . Little Toomai attended to Kala Nag 's supper , and as evening fell , wandered through the camp , unspeakably happy , in search of a tom-tom . When an Indian child 's heart is full , he does not run about and make a noise in an irregular fashion . He sits down to a sort of revel all by himself . And Little Toomai had been spoken to by Petersen Sahib ! If he had not found what he wanted , I believe he would have been ill . But the sweetmeat seller in the camp lent him a little tom-tom -- a drum beaten with the flat of the hand -- and he sat down , cross-legged , before Kala Nag as the stars began to come out , the tom-tom in his lap , and he thumped and he thumped and he thumped , and the more he thought of the great honor that had been done to him , the more he thumped , all alone among the elephant fodder . There was no tune and no words , but the thumping made him happy . 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 XXXXX 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 .
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