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 with you , O Kala Nag ! '' The elephant turned , without a sound , took three strides back to the boy in the moonlight , put down his trunk , swung him up to his neck , and almost before Little Toomai had settled his knees , slipped into the forest . There was one blast of furious trumpeting from the lines , and then the silence shut down on everything , and Kala Nag began to move . Sometimes a tuft of high grass washed along his sides as a wave washes along the sides of a ship , and sometimes a cluster of wild-pepper vines would scrape along his back , or a bamboo would creak where his shoulder touched it . But between those times he moved absolutely without any sound , drifting through the thick Garo forest as though it had been smoke . He was going uphill , but though Little Toomai watched the stars in the rifts of the trees , he could not tell in what direction .
Then Kala Nag reached the crest of the ascent and stopped for a minute , and Little Toomai could see the tops XXXXX the trees lying all speckled and furry under the moonlight for miles and miles , and the blue-white mist over the river in the hollow .
At across if into like of though through till under