THE BAD ELEPHANT
We were riding slowly, in Indian file, through a rather dense belt of forest, M leading, when that worthy suddenly drew up and slowly turned his head round to shoot a warning glance at us. When he did this old M always looked so exactly like a setter drawing up to a point, that it was all Jack and I could do to avoid laughing aloud.
At this particular moment, laughter or anything else of a noisy description would have been a grave mistake, for M was very much in earnest. He beckoned us up to him, and pointed to a tree which had been almost stripped of its leaves and smaller twigs, and said, "Elfunt—bad elfunt!"
"Why bad?" whispered Jack to me; "and how does he know whether it is bad or good?"
To this I could give no reply, for I could not imagine wherein consisted the goodness or the badness of an elephant. There did not appear to me to be anything peculiarly wicked in an animal helping itself to its natural and favourite food without M'ngulu's leave; and I confess that up to this point my sympathies were in favour of the elephant and against his traducer, M; but I was to learn presently that this elephant was a very bad animal indeed—a really wicked creature without one redeeming feature about his character.
It seems that the acute M'ngulu formed his opinion as to the elephant upon whose traces he had suddenly chanced by the manner in which he had eaten his breakfast. He had not only stripped the tree, but had savagely pulled it about and broken its branches, scattering bits far and wide, and from this fact M promptly concluded that he was a bad or "rogue" elephant—namely, one who by reason of his evil temper has found it impossible to remain with the herd to which he belongs, and has therefore separated himself or been forcibly separated from his fellows, and has departed to vent his fury, in future, upon trees, or strangers, or anything that is encountered.
"You know," said Jack, when we discussed this question together afterwards, "it's a capital idea! Why don't we fellows of the human persuasion adopt the plan? Fancy, if one could always banish sulky chaps, at school or anywhere, and send them away to rage about the place until they recovered their senses and returned mild and reasonable!"
I said that I scarcely thought the plan would work in polite society, because, though the community to which he belonged would no doubt be excellently well rid of the rampageous one, the rest of the world would probably object to his being at large, and would likely enough return him to the fold in several pieces.
M'ngulu followed up that elephant, by some mysterious process of his own, for two hours, at the end of which period we had drawn so close to the quarry that we could distinctly hear him somewhere in front of us, still breakfasting, apparently in his own distinctively "roguish" way, for there was a sound of continual rending and tearing of branches, and the ground here and there was littered with wasted food which, Jack whispered, might have been given to the elephantine poor instead of being chucked about in this ruthless way!
A minute or two more, and M'ngulu stopped, sitting motionless upon his horse, finger to lip. Wondering and excited, we followed his example, sitting like two statues.