“Well,” said Tom, “it is fair enough, though I doubt if the poor old bag of bones is worth two hundred rupees. He will be well fed, and returned in good case, and if he dies now on our hands, after living a century, it will be a base piece of ingratitude for all your kindness; however, there is life in the old boy yet. You and he are great chums. He is a splendid shikar elephant, though a bit slow. I think it is a capital bunderbast.” And he signed.
The mahout (now our servant) was full of zeal and zest, and came and laid his head on my feet, and assured me that “I was his father and his mother, and that he was my slave.”
I took care to see Shere Bahadur fed daily. He now really received a dozen thick chupatties, and plenty of sugar-cane and ghoor, and his expression lost its look of anguish and famine, though it was early days to expect any improvement in his figure. When we marched, he accompanied us, and I rode in the howdah and enjoyed it. He picked his way so cleverly, and thrust branches aside from our path so carefully, and seemed (though this may be a wild flight of imagination) to like to work for me. He was capital at going through jungle, or over rough ground, but in marshy places the poor dear old gentleman seemed to have great difficulty in getting along, and to have but little power in his hind quarters.
Six weeks of our leave had melted away, as it were—time had passed but too rapidly. Shere Bahadur proved invaluable out shooting. Thanks to him, Tom had got a fine tigress, and Charlie some splendid head of deer. They looked so odd in the high elephant grass—no elephant to be seen, but merely two men, as it were sailing along in a howdah. Our last days were, alas! drawing near; our stores were becoming perilously low. It was the end of March, the grass and leaves were dry as tinder and brittle as glass, as the hot winds swept over them. Yes, it was imperative to exchange these charming tents for the thick cat-haunted thatch of our commonplace bungalow. We were all sunburnt, happy, and somewhat shabby. I had contrived to see something of India, after all. I knew the habits of some of the birds and beasts—the names of flowers and trees. I had gazed at my own reflection in lonely forest pools, that were half covered with water-lilies, and from whose sedgy margin flocks of bright-plumaged water-fowl had flashed.
I had met the peacock and his wives leisurely sauntering home after a night of pillage in the grain fields. I had seen, in a sunny glade, a wild dog playing with her puppies. I had watched the big rohu turning lazily over in the river; the sly grey alligator lying log-like on the bank; the blue-bull, or nilgai, dashing through the undergrowth. In short, I had seen a good deal, though I was dull.
Twice a day I visited my dear friend Shere Bahadur. I had become quite attached to him, and I firmly believe that he loved me devotedly. One evening I arrived rather earlier than usual on my rounds, and discovered the mahout in deep converse with another man, a stranger, who brought his visit to an abrupt close, and said, as he hurried away, “Teen Roze” (i.e. “three days”), to which the mahout responded, “Bahout Atcha” (i.e. “good”).
“It is my Bhai,” he explained. Every one seems to be every one else’s brother, especially suspicious-looking acquaintances. “He has come a long journey with a message from my father—my father plenty sick, calling for me.” An every-day excuse for “taking leave,” only second to the death of the delinquent’s grandmother.
On the afternoon of the third day we found it too hot to go out early, and were sitting in our dining-room tent fanning ourselves vigorously and playing “spoof,” when we suddenly heard a great commotion—a sound of shouting and running and trumpeting. A tiger, or a “must” elephant, was my first idea. Yes, there it was! A cry of “The elephant! the elephant!” It was an elephant—my elephant. We hurried to where a crowd of all our retainers had collected. A quarter of a mile away there was a sudden dip in the ground, a half-dried-up pool of water, covered with a glaze of dark blue scum, surrounded by an expanse of black oozy mud, fringed with rushes and great water-reeds,—the sort of place that was the sure haunt of malarious fever—and struggling in the midst of the quagmire was Shere Bahadur. He had already sunk up to his shoulders, whilst his mahout lay on the bank tearing his hair, beating his head upon the ground, and shrieking at intervals, “My life is departing! my life is departing!” Tom angrily ordered him to arise, and get to his place on the animal’s back, and endeavour to guide him out at the safest part; but it appeared to be all quagmire, and quivered for yards at every movement of the elephant. The mahout gibbered, and sobbed, but complied. He scrambled on to Shere Bahadur’s neck, and yelled, gesticulated, urged, and goaded. No need; the poor brute was aware of the danger—he was labouring now, not for other people’s profit or pleasure, but for his own life. Every one ran for wood, wine-cases, or branches, and flung them to the elephant; and it was pitiful to see how eagerly he snatched at them, and placed them beneath him, and endeavoured to build himself a foothold. After long and truly desperate exertions, he got his forelegs right up on the sound ground, ropes were thrown to him, but, alas! it was all of no avail; the morass was a peculiarly bad one, and his powerless hind quarters were unable to complete the effort and land him safely. No, the cruel quagmire slowly, surely, and remorselessly sucked him down; and, after a most determined effort on the part of the spectators, and a frenzied but impotent struggle on his own, Tom turned to me and exclaimed—
“Poor old boy! it’s not a bit of good; he will have to go!”
“Go where?” I cried. “He can be saved; he must be saved,” I added, hysterically.