“HE SCREAMED, FROTHED, AND LUNGED AGAINST HIS FETTERS”

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They took us to get a first glimpse of the stockade in the now fast-dying light. It was the old Ratemahatmeya’s fourteenth kraal, he told us, and he had had 2500 villagers out for many days. He hoped to catch thirty or forty elephants, but some might escape through the line of beaters that night, as the elephants were desperate and the beaters nearly exhausted. Even as he talked there were sounds of trampling and crashing of underbrush a few yards to our right, and the whole line of beaters rushed toward the spot, beating brass pots and yelling. After torches had been thrown, the crashing ceased suddenly, and not another sound was heard. Not a line of living form could be seen; not even a leaf stirred, but one had the most vivid sense that all about us the jungle was permeated with mysterious forces, tremendous, yet impalpable.

The stockade itself was worth a fortune, could it have been brought to market. It was constructed of peeled ebony and satinwood logs, many from twenty to thirty feet long and as thick as a man’s body. Seven hundred and fifty coolies had spent three weeks in building it, sinking the upright logs ten feet into the earth and with rattan thongs lashing to them the horizontal logs at three-foot intervals. It looked enormously strong and resistant. Overlooking the stockade on three sides, towers had been built from which the Ratemahatmeya and his principal guests were to view the grand spectacle of noosing and tying up the kraaled elephants.

Dinner in the hotel that night was eaten on bare boards, within gunny-sack walls, and with damp earth underfoot. As we sat about the boards afterward, in bare feet and pajamas, a small, breathless figure dashed up and flung his torch of dried stalks down before us. Some elephants had entered the kraal and the gate had been closed behind them! It was not a moment for reflection. Away we ran through the black night, barefooted and pajama-clad, unmindful of thorns, and deadly cobras, perhaps, lying in wait along the path. Guided by the weird little figure with his torch, who was immensely proud to have been the bearer of great tidings, we reached the stockade and found the Ratemahatmeya seated on a log rocking himself in glee. Ten elephants, led by a furious old cow, he explained, had been trapped. To-morrow the rest of the herd would be caught. In this, however, he proved a bad prophet, for during the night the elephants outside the kraal broke through the beaters’ lines and escaped.

Around the circle of the stockade they were now lighting hundreds of fires. Flames and smoke shot up half-way to the tops of the trees, and the whole jungle was an endless moving parade of black shadows. Scores of men lined the barricade, their bodies dripping sweat, points of light flashing from their sharpened spear-heads. The business was eery and serious. Twice the fear-maddened animals had charged the stockade and twice had been driven back with spear-thrusts and firebrands. Now they were hiding somewhere in the gulf of blackness beyond the fires, as silent as the dark, plotting, full of hatred, and terribly dangerous.

We went back to the hotel and to a sleep of troubled dreams. There is no doubt that the presence of wild elephants in the neighborhood of one’s slumbers produces a curious impression. Some might even call it “funk.” Throughout the night the shouting of the beaters and the muffled trumpetings of giants in distress told how mighty Hathi and his sons struggled to break through the cordon of their enemies. And when morning came we knew from the scattered fire-lines that the lords of the jungle had bravely won their freedom. The Ratemahatmeya held a sunrise court-martial over it, but no one knew anything. He was forced to content himself with the ten animals safe within the kraal.

Early as we were at the stockade, the village, bringing its breakfast in fresh kos leaves and gourds, was there before us. A thin stream of sunlight, penetrating the kraal, revealed the captured herd standing together in the deep shadows beneath a giant unga-tree, brooding and sinister, their alinement as perfect as that of a line of infantry. They were absolutely motionless, yet somehow conveyed the impression of hair-trigger alertness. We could count two half-grown bulls, two yearling calves, and a two-year-old. The other five were cows. There were no tuskers among them, but it soon became evident that an old cow, which always took her position on the extreme right, was “boss” of the herd. The moment she cocked her ears the others stiffened their tails and gathered themselves to charge.

We had not long to wait for the first charge in daylight. Ratemahatmeya Kalawane came upon the scene riding his brother-in-law’s finest decoy, a magnificent brute in the prime of his vigor and intelligence. Apparently without a command, the big elephant majestically approached the stockade at a point nearest the beleaguered herd, lifted his trunk over the barricade and gave the call of his kind. The whole herd at once swung toward him, as if in obedience to the voice of a friend. They had covered barely twenty paces, however, when suspicion entered the mind of the old cow. At her signal they all paused, waving their trunks uncertainly. One of the village headmen thought this an auspicious moment to step through the stockade for a clearer view. Instantly the old cow’s tail shot into the air as stiff as a rod, and she charged with the speed of an express-train, the others following her, but half-heartedly. A volley of yells from the spearmen and beaters greeted her as she came, but she struck the stockade with a tremendous impact, rocking the piles in their sockets and making the earth tremble. The beaters stood fearlessly to their work, however, and a score of spear-thrusts from the heavy twelve-foot staves sent her back, sullen and bloody. The others, seeing their leader’s discomfiture, contemptuously turned their backs to the enemy and continued their interrupted coquetting with the decoy elephant.