“Impossible; he has not sufficient power to raise himself; the ground is a sort of quicksand. If there was another elephant here, we might manage to haul him out; but, as it is, it is a mere question of time—he will be gone in half an hour.”
I wept, implored, ran about like one demented, begging, bribing, entreating the natives to help. And, I must confess, they all did their very best, nobly led by Tom and Charlie. But their efforts were fruitless. Shere Bahadur’s hour had come. He had escaped bullets, grape-shot, and tiger, to be gradually swallowed down by that slimy black quagmire, and—horrible thought—buried alive! At the end of a quarter of an hour he had sunk up to his ears, and had ceased to struggle. His trunk was still above the mud. His poor hidden sides!—we could hear them going like the paddle-wheels of a steamer. It appeared to me that his eye sought mine!
Oh, I could endure the scene no longer. I left the crowd to see the very end, rushed back to the tent, flung myself on my bed, covered up my head, and wept myself nearly blind. It seemed hours and hours—twenty-four hours—before Tom came in, and said, as solemnly as if he were announcing the death of a friend, “It is all over.”
The detestable mahout over-acted his part; at first he simulated frenzy, his grief far surpassed mine, he gibbered, wept, and beat his breast, and rolled upon the ground at our feet in a paroxysm of anguish, as he assured us that the rajah was a ruthless lord, and that when he returned to Betwa without the Hathi he would certainly be put to torture, and subsequently to death. And then Tom suddenly bethought himself of the terms of the agreement. The elephant had not died a natural death. No, he had “gone down quick into the pit.” He was dead, and Tom was bound to pay two thousand rupees (about £150). He looked exceedingly glum, but there was no other alternative; yes, he must pay—even if he could not contrive to look pleasant. He most reluctantly sent the rajah a cheque for the amount on the Bank of Bengal, and the mahout departed with somewhat suspicious alacrity, leaving the howdah behind him.
Afterwards, we became acquainted with two extraordinary facts. One was that the rajah had carefully arranged for the death of the elephant, even before we left our first camp; that the mahout’s so-called brother was simply a special messenger, who had been despatched to “hurry up” the tragedy. Discovery the second, that the mahout had been seen by our shikarri and several other men deliberately goading and urging the elephant into the quagmire. The wise animal had at first steadily resisted, but putting implicit faith in his rider—who had driven him for years—and being the most docile of his race, he had ultimately yielded, and obediently waded in to his death. At first we indignantly refused to credit these stories, and declared that they were merely the ordinary malicious native slander; but subsequently a slip of copy-book paper was discovered in the pocket of the howdah, which, being interpreted by Tom, read as follows—
“Make no delay. Bad quagmire. Give fifty rupees.—Betwa.”
And Shere Bahadur was betrayed for that sum.
We received in due time an effusive letter from the Rajah of Betwa, written, as usual, on the leaf of a copy-book, and inscribed with numerous ornamental flourishes. He also enclosed a formal stamped receipt, which is on my bill-file at the present moment, and is not the least remarkable of the many curious documents there impaled. It says—
“Received from Mister Captain Thomas Hay, the sum of two thousand government rupees, the value of one War elephant—lost!”