Jungle Joe/Chapter 3
Sahib Anderson laid his plans for the famous elephant-drive with great care and skill. Full well he knew the hazard to both life and limb that the enterprise held. The Malays who helped him were not so well versed in the sport as he, but even if they had known the danger they would probably have taken the risk, for life is held of small worth in the Orient.
The Sahib's greatest difficulty was in getting the natives to work, for the average Malay is probably the laziest person in the whole world. This is especially true when his stomach is full. If he has just eaten he will say, "I have eaten! I am satisfied. Why should I work for to-morrow? I may die to-night. If Allah allows me to live through the night, I will work for to-morrow's food when to-morrow comes."
His needs are very few. Just a small patch of rice and the fish that swarm in the great rivers suffice for him. Even his fishing he does in the laziest manner, usually putting lime into the river and causing the fish to rise to the top of the water and die. Then he paddles about and picks them up at his leisure.
It was only by representing to the natives that elephant-driving was a great game, a wonderful sport, that the Sahib was finally enabled to get the desired hundred men. In this work he was much aided by Omar, a petty Malay prince, who drafted some of his own followers. Always conspicuous among the elephant-drivers was little Ali, the Prince's eighty-ear-old son. Vainly the Sahib protested that it was no sort of a place for a small boy. The Prince always shook his head. "He my shadow," he would exclaim laconically. "You cannot keep your shadow at home. He go where I go."
"But it is very dangerous work," persisted the Sahib. "The boy might get killed."
Again the Prince shook his head. "He not get killed. No animal touch him. He got a charm. He swim in the river and the crocodile come up and smell him and no bite him. He all right."
The small boy fairly worshipped the Sahib. He was always standing by watching the white man whenever he was allowed to. He and his father Omar could both speak a little English which they had picked up from an Englishman who had hunted tigers in the vicinity the year before and lived with the Prince's family. So Sahib Anderson and the small boy got on famously.
Ali was filled with wonder at the power of the Sahib's thunder-stick. His compass, his maps, his watch, and his books all spelled magic to the eyes of the Malay youth. Ali was always asking questions, many of which made the Sahib laugh, and as he was in need of laughter at the time he was usually glad to see the lad.
The Sahib first had fifty of his drivers locate the great elephant herd which was led by Baby Elephant's mother. When they had done this, they took great care not to frighten them, but drove them around in a circle, so that they did not stray far from the locality. This driving they did by merely shouting and beating on tom-toms, but always keeping out of sight. If an elephant herd either sees or smells a man it will always stampede, and a stampeding herd of elephants is just a little short of a passing tornado; nearly everything in its path is broken down and trodden into bits.
So while the fifty drivers kept the elephants going around in a circle, the other fifty set to work to build the corral into which they were to be driven. This was most arduous work, as they had to cut a lot of trees fifteen inches through, and had only their parangs or great knives with which to cut them.
When the requisite number of trees had been cut, the Sahib selected a place in the jungle where it was very heavily timbered. and here he marked out a circle of seventy-five feet in diameter and then began setting five feet apart in this circle the trees which he had cut, taking care to include as many of the standing trees as possible.
The posts were set five feet deep and the dirt tamped very thoroughly about them. The Sahib also took great pains not to disturb the appearance of the jungle. When the trees had been set, each was braced with three smaller trees on the outside. Bamboo was then laced between the posts and they were securely lashed together with large ropes made of twisted rattan. Then leaves were woven all through the structure so as to make it look natural.
At the entrance a great drop-gate was made, and it was held aloft by rattan ropes. Two wings were then built runming from the entrance, being fifty feet apart at the farther end and converging at the gate.
When all was in readiness, several Malay priests dedicated the corral with an odd ceremony. They went several hundred yards into the jungle and advanced towards the corral singing a strange chant. When they arrived at the enclosure they entered and killed a cock and sprinkled his blood upon the ground inside. This was to insure the success of the drive.
When everything was in readiness, the Sahib posted the fifty men who had been at work upon the corral in trees forming a double avenue from the herd, which by this time was rather restless. This double avenue led from the herd towards the corral. These men were to guide the drive by their shouts to the fifty men who were doing the driving, as the drive was to be made in utter darkness. The jungle was as dense as thick standing trees and interlacing vines could make it. It was full of pitfalls and bog-holes.
Presently from the very depths of the jungle there floated out on the stillness the solemn hoot of a great owl. It was an eerie sound and a call of great import to the jungle-drivers, for it was the Sahib's signal to begin the drive. The call was taken up by the natives in the tree-tops, and it passed down the avenue of waiting men and along the half—circle that partly inclosed the restless elephant herd. Then from behind the herd and to the right and the left came strange sounds. They were made by the Malays beating on tom-toms and uttering wild, fantastic cries, but to Baby Elephant's mother, the leader and guardian of the herd, they were inexplicable, and they filled her with uneasiness.
The elephant's sense of smell and eyesight are not of the keenest, but his hearing is very keen and he dislikes noises of all sorts. So, when the sounds from behind became a pandemonium, the elephant herd moved slowly forward. Baby Elephant's mother leading the way and Baby Elephant keeping close to her side. Whenever the herd veered to the right or left from a straight line towards the corral, the sounds on that side were increased and the herd swung back to avoid the noise. Thus it was that the drive went forward, a few yards or rods at a time in the inky darkness. At times the natives had to cut their way through the jungle with their parangs or great knives, the tangle was so thick. Mosquitoes and flies that stung like hornets bit them at every step. Nettles and thorny vines and bushes tore their clothing, their hands, and their faces. Soon every man in the drive was bleeding from a dozen small wounds, and still the drive went forward.
Nor were the elephants and the Malay drivers the only dwellers in the jungle that night. Baba-rusa and his troop scurried away through the jungle at the oncoming of the great herd. Spotted Leopard slunk away to distant cover; while monkeys peered curiously down from their perches in the tree-tops above, and startled night-birds uttering their eerie calls whirred away in the darkness. And still the drive went on. Baby Elephant's mother and the rest of the elephant herd were all unconscious that they were being driven. They just knew that strange sounds and strange impulses were abroad in the night about them, and that they were moving steadily forward.
The herd had been in motion nearly half the night but had covered only a mile when the tragedy that Sahib Anderson had feared occurred. There are always small elephants on the outskirts of the herd who wander about as sentinels or outposts, looking for danger. At about two o'clock in the morning, one of these sentinels sighted one of the Malay drivers and gave the alarm in a shrill, wild trumpet. His call was taken up by the entire herd, and in ten seconds' time all were trumpeting, bellowing, and squeaking. But that was not all, for with one impulse, led by Baby Elephant's mother, they started in a mad stampede through the
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jungle. Imagine, if you can, a herd of sixty elephants, each weighing from four to five tons, mad with fear, rushing blindly through the jungle. Small trees went down like ninepins. They cut a swath like that of a cyclone, and the solid earth shook with the thunder of their mighty feet. There were cries of fear and alarm from the Malay drivers, barely heard amid the thunder and trumpeting of the stampeding herd, which turned sharply in its tracks and rushed back along the way it had come, not only one mile but five.
When the thunder of the stampeding herd had died away in the distance. Sahib Anderson and his men lit torches and searched the trail of the elephant herd for their comrades.
One of the first whom they discovered was Prince Omar, the father of little Ali. He was lying at the foot of a great tree, with his life crushed out of him. Ali himself stood behind the tree looking wistfully down at his father, but there were no tears in his eyes and he showed no signs of sorrow.
The Sahib hurried to his side and caught the lad up in his arms. "You poor boy," he said. "How did it happen?"
"When the herd rush by, a great bull see Omar and Ali behind the tree. He pick up Omar in his trunk and beat him against the tree, and he sleep. Allah is good."
At these simple and beautiful words from the lad, tears filled the Sahib's eyes. "Where did you ever hear that, boy?" he asked.
"It is what the old priest said when my mother died," returned Ali. "He said Allah was always good."
"But didn't the bull try to hurt you, Ali?" inquired the Sahib.
"He look at me like he strike me with his trunk, but I say to him, 'Peace, brother, peace,' and he go away. For that was what the priest told me to say to the cobra."
"Well, I'll be blessed," was all the Sahib could say, but he remembered what Omar had said about the boy swimming in the river, and that the crocodiles would not eat him.
Farther on they found still another dead Malay and six wounded. So, the jungle-beaters went to the Sahib's camp and gave up the drive for that night. But the following night they were surrounding the herd again. All through this night they drove and were more successful, for they recovered three of the five lost miles. The following night they gained two more and on the third night, to the great joy of all, the mighty herd slowly approached the entrance of the wings that led to the corral. All unsuspecting. Baby Elephant's mother led her great herd down the converging wings and into the corral, while one after another the herd streamed after her. As they began to jam in the wings, the drivers increased the noise and the elephants behind shoved those ahead forward. In fifteen minutes from the time when Baby Elephant's mother entered the corral, fifty-two of the fifty-six elephants were inside and the ropes holding up the heavy gate loosed, and the gate fell with a mighty thud, spelling the doom of the elephant herd. Then the jubilant Malays ascended with the Sahib to the platform which had been erected at the top of the posts and looked down upon such a sight as they had never seen before. Fifty-six mountainous animals wedged together and helpless in an enclosure only seventy-five feet in diameter, where they had been trapped, through the great cunning of the Sahib and the courage of his men.
It was a time of great rejoicing for the natives, and they feasted and danced for a week before the Sahib could get them to do any more work. Such an elephant-drive had never been seen or even dreamed of in their country before, and they intended to make the most of it. It had cost them bloodshed and heart-breaking toil, and there was every reason why they should rejoice now.