otherwise. The stuffed specimen in Mr Bullock’s Museum of Natural and Artificial Curiosities, at No. 22 Piccadilly, had engaged him a full quarter of an hour when he had visited with d’Arcey Jessope two years before, but had, naturally, revealed nothing of its stentorian powers. And those living beasts that tramped, with the greatest docility, along the thoroughfares of Madras and Guntoor had likewise made not a sound. He now supposed they must bellow like cattle, and was suspicious at first of the subedar’s assurance that the noise came, indeed, trumpet-like from the animal’s trunk. Johnson had once assured him that an elephant was able to prospect for precious stones in the ground, and Lieutenant Locke now insisted, even more improbably, that elephants were able to throw stones with great accuracy at a mark.
The Sukri river, explained Templer, was the border between the princely state of Chintal and the Northern Circars, and there was held to be common title to its waters. Thus it was not evident whence the distressed elephant, thrashing knee-deep at the edge of the river with its attendants, had come.
‘Elephant fussunded, sahib,’ concluded Subedar Thangraj.
Hervey looked at Templer, to whom the problem did not seem novel. ‘Mud or quicksand it will be,’ said the cornet. ‘The great beast will have sunk and struggled, and now he will be well and truly stuck.’
‘What shall we do?’ asked Hervey, assuming they must do something.
‘I’ve seen a gaur caught this way. I fear there’s nothing we can do that is not already being done,’ he replied, indicating the ropes on which the attendants were pulling as the elephant continued its trumpeting as loud as before, and its two companions on the far bank added to the uproar.
‘Save me, O God: for the waters are come in, even unto my soul.’
Cornet Templer looked at him strangely.
‘Psalm Sixty-nine,’ explained Hervey, with something between a smile and a grimace. ‘ “I stick fast in the deep mire, where no ground is: I am come into deep waters, so that the floods run over me.” ’
‘And does the psalmist have any notion of how the elephant may be delivered from the mire, sir?’ asked Templer, smiling too.
Hervey racked his brain for the rest of the psalm — one of the longer ones. ‘ “As for me, when I am poor and in heaviness: thy help, O God, shall lift me up.” ’
‘Then we had better go and do God’s work down there, sir,’ laughed Templer. ‘Subedar sahib — shoulders to it!’
The attendants had cut grass and branches from the few trees thereabouts, and had thrown them for the elephant to tread on. But it had been no use. They even tore planks from a ferry moored nearby and put them in reach of his trunk, but he seized each one and angrily threw it aside.
‘Elephant will tear off his mahout to step on, sahib, if he has need,’ said the subedar; ‘it is most strange he will not take planks. Better for stay clear, sahib.’
The attendants — a dozen or more — were now hitching the ropes to the two other elephants in a last bid to haul out the stricken animal.
‘That will cut through to the bone, surely,’ said Hervey, seeing them only manage to secure a line round one leg. He sprang from the saddle, unable to remain a spectator any longer — even if he had no other ideas.
Templer and the subedar dismounted too. ‘I think we could wedge some of those planks under his belly to prevent his sinking any further,’ said the cornet.
Subedar Thangraj barked orders to the attendants and the patrol. He had advised they kept their distance, but now that his cornet had decided on this course of action he would direct the operation with all the vigour the sahibs would expect. Meanwhile, Templer and Hervey removed their boots and jackets to cross the quicksand.
The attendants spoke a dialect unintelligible even to the subedar, but several understood Hervey’s Urdu and in a few minutes, with the help of half a dozen sepoys, they succeeded in getting up a platform around the beast, with wedging planks angled under its great bulk. By now, however, the elephant had sunk so deep that all but a part of his back and head were under the sand. He could no longer struggle, only wave his trunk in the air and trumpet feebly — though the clamour of the attendants and the calls of the other two elephants were as strong as before.
‘Sahib, elephant will soon go under quicksand. Better for we shoot him now and take him from his misery,’ said the subedar.
When Templer put this to the attendants they howled in protest and waved their hands about in horror. It was only then that Hervey, who had been standing on the platform for some minutes, dismayed that he could not think of any solution to the worsening problem, thought that he might have an answer. ‘Great heavens!’ he exclaimed, as it occurred to him. ‘Templer, do you remember your Ovid?’
Cornet Templer was taken aback.
‘Come, man: how did Hercules cleanse the Augean stables?’
Templer thought a moment. ‘He diverted the river through them. But what—’
Hervey did not let him finish. ‘See, there’s a bend in the river yonder,’ he said, pointing upstream; ‘we can cut a channel and let in water. It should loosen the quicksand and we might then be able to get him out — that, or it will be over quickly for the wretched beast.’
Templer gave the orders at once to Subedar Thangraj. He in turn got the sepoys and others who had gathered on the bank to work with their bare hands, and in half an hour they had made the cutting, and water began to flow towards the fussunded elephant. At first it looked as though all that would happen was the merciful drowning of the beast, now utterly exhausted and seemingly resigned to its fate, but after a few more minutes the quicksand started to loosen. The attendants put ropes around the animal’s quarters and the combined strength of fifty men and two elephants now braced for a final effort. The water was fast rising, and the ropes might not bear the strain. But at the signal, all pulled as if their own lives depended on it — and out he came, like a cork from a bottle.
The beast was done for. He had been stuck fast for a full five hours and every rib showed. He stood, swaying, as if he might collapse at any moment. ‘Brandy, Subedar sahib: fetch him some brandy,’ said Hervey.
Subedar Thangraj found a bottle from the bat-horse packs and, mixed with water in a bucket, the brandy was proffered to the exhausted elephant by his mahout. And it seemed not without some effect, for although he continued to sway on his feet, he began to step from side to side, showing no sign of wanting to lie down. The attendants were overjoyed, and began an incoherent babbling which nevertheless conveyed appreciation of the sahibs’ ingenuity. And then suddenly there was excited pointing and more jabbering: ‘
‘Matthew Hervey, I never supposed for a moment that you would take my advice,’ said Selden as he rode up, followed by a half-dozen lancers, saffron pennants fluttering — the distinguishing colour of the princely state of Chintal.
The last time Hervey had heard that voice was in Dover the best part of two years before. Hatless, he held his arm out to the side and made the smallest bow of his head, smiling with incredulity as he did so: ‘Mr Selden, by what providence is it that we should meet thus?’
The salutri laughed. ‘Doubtless you would say it was the will of God, but I should not wish to debate divinity again with you — at least, not here. It is a great world into which we are born, but a small one in which we choose to live. Who are your friends?’
‘Oh, forgive me,’ said Hervey, conscious now of Templer and Locke standing silent next to him. ‘Let me present Mr Locke, lieutenant of Marines in His Majesty’s Ship
Selden, now dismounted, held out his hand to each. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, smiling the while, ‘you are standing on the left bank of the Sukri. May I therefore welcome you on behalf of the Rajah of Chintal to his domain.’
They expressed themselves grateful but explained that the crossing was unintentional. One of the mahouts began to talk rapidly in his own tongue, and Selden quizzed him with considerable fluency. He turned to Hervey again. ‘It appears, too, that I must thank you on the rajah’s behalf for rescuing one of his favourite hunting elephants. The rajah is a great
