MY LORD THE ELEPHANT.

'Less you want your toes trod off you'd better get back at once, For the bullocks are walkin' two by two,

The byles are walkin' two by two,

The bullocks are walkin' two by two,

An' the elephants bring the guns!

Ho! Yuss!

Great-big-long-black-forty-pounder guns:

Jiggery-jolty to and fro,

Each as big as a launch in tow-
Blind-dumb-broad-breeched-beggars o' batterin' guns.

Barrack-room Ballad.

TOUCHING the truth of this tale there need be no doubt at all, for it was told to me by Mulvaney at the back of the elephant-lines, one warm evening when we were taking the dogs out for exercise. The twelve Government elephants rocked at their pickets outside the big mud-walled stables (one arch, as wide as a bridge-arch, to each restless beast), and the mahouts were preparing the evening meal. Now and again some impatient youngster would smell the cooking flour-cakes and squeal; and the naked. little children of the elephant-lines would strut down the row shouting and commanding silence, or, reaching up, would slap at the eager trunks.

Copyright, 1893, by D. Appleton & Co.

Then the elephants feigned to be deeply interested in pouring dust upon their heads, but, so soon as the children passed, the rocking, fidgeting, and muttering broke out again.

The sunset was dying, and the elephants heaved and swayed dead black against the one sheet of rose-red low down in the dusty gray sky. It was at the beginning of the hot weather, just after the troops had changed into their white clothes, so Mulvaney and Ortheris, looked like ghosts walking through the dusk. Learoyd had gone off to another barrack to buy sulphur-ointment for his last dog under suspicion of mange, and with delicacy had put his kennel into quarantine at the back of the furnace where they cremate the anthrax-cases.

'You wouldn't like mange, little woman?' said Ortheris, turning my terrier over on her fat white. back with his foot. 'You're no end bloomin' partic'lar, you are. 'Oo wouldn't take no notice o' met t'other day 'cause she was goin' 'ome all alone in 'er dorg-cart, eh? Settin' on the box-seat like a bloomin' little tart, you was, Vicy. Now you run along an' make them 'uttees 'oller. Sick 'em, Vicy, loo!'

Elephants loathe little dogs. Vixen barked herself down the pickets, and in a minute all the elephants were kicking and squealing and clucking together.

'Oh, you soldier-men,' said a mahout angrily,

call off your she-dog. She is frightening our elephant-folk.'

'Rummy beggars!' said Ortheris meditatively. "Call 'em people, same as if they was. An' they are too. Not so bloomin' rummy when you come to think of it, neither.'

Vixen returned yapping to show that she could do it again if she liked, and established herself between Ortheris's knees, smiling a large smile at his lawful dogs who dared not fly at her.

"Seed the battery this mornin'?' said Ortheris. He meant the newly-arrived elephant-battery; otherwise he would have said simply 'guns.' Three elephants harnessed tandem go to each gun, and those who have not seen the big forty-pounders of position trundling along in the wake of their gigantic team have yet something to behold. The leadelephant had behaved very badly on parade; had been cut loose, sent back to the lines in disgrace, and was at that hour squealing and lashing out with his trunk at the end of the line; a picture of blind, bound, bad-temper. His mahout, standing clear of the flail-like blows, was trying to soothe him.

'That's the beggar that cut up on p'rade. 'E's must,' said Ortheris pointing. 'There'll be murder in the lines soon, and then, per'aps, 'e'll get loose an' we'll 'ave to be turned out to shoot 'im, same as when one o' they native king's elephants musted last June. 'Ope 'e will.'

'Must be sugared!' said Mulvaney contemptuously from his resting-place on a pile of dried bedding. 'He's no more than in a powerful bad timper wid bein' put upon. I'd lay my kit he's new to the gun-team, an' by natur' he hates haulin'. Ask the mahout, sorr.'

I hailed the old white-bearded mahout, who was lavishing pet words on his sulky red-eyed charge.

'He is not musth,' the man replied indignantly; 'only his honour has been touched. Is an elephant an ox or a mule that he should tug at a trace? His strength is in his head-Peace, peace, my Lord! It was not my fault that they yoked thee this morning!-Only a low-caste elephant will pull a gun, and he is a Kumeria of the Doon. It cost a year and the life of a man to break him to burden. They of the Artillery put him in the gun-team because one of their base-born brutes had gone lame. No wonder that he was, and is wrath.'

'Rummy! Most unusual rum,' said Ortheris. Gawd, 'e is in a temper, though! S'pose 'e got loose!'

Mulvaney began to speak but checked himself, and I asked the mahout what would happen if the heel-chains broke.

'God knows, who made elephants,' he said simply. In his now state peradventure he might kill you three, or run at large till his rage abated. He would not kill me, except he were musth. Then

would he kill me before any one in the world, because he loves me. Such is the custom of the elephant-folk; and the custom of us mahout-people matches it for foolishness. We trust each our own elephant, till our own elephant kills us. Other castes trust women, but we the elephant-folk. I have seen men deal with enraged elephants and live; but never was man yet born of woman that met my lord the elephant in his musth and lived to tell of the taming. They are enough bold who meet him angry.'

I translated.

Then said Terence: Ask the heathen if he iver saw a man tame an elephint,-anyways-a white man.'

'Once,' said the mahout, 'I saw a man astride of such a beast in the town of Cawnpore; a bareheaded man, a white man, beating it upon the head with a gun. It was said he was possessed of devils or drunk.'

'Is ut like, think you, he'd be doin' it sober?' said Mulvaney after interpretation, and the chained elephant roared.

'There's only one man top of earth that would be the partic'lar kind o' sorter bloomin' fool to do it!' said Ortheris. 'When was that, Mulvaney?'

'As the naygur sez, in Cawnpore; an' I was that fool-in the days av my youth. But it came about as naturil as wan thing leads to another,—me an'