point of the Poona host, and at the very commencement of the engagement the elephant’s mahout, just as he ordered it to halt, received his death wound and fell off its back. The elephant, in obedience to his order, stood its ground. The shock of battle closed round it and the standard it carried, and the uproar of contending armies filled the scene with unusual terrors. But the elephant never moved a yard, refusing to advance or to retire the standard entrusted to it by so much as a step; and the Mahrattas, seeing the flag still flying in its place, would not believe that the day was going against them, and rallied again and again round their immovable standard-bearer. Meanwhile the elephant stood there in the very heart of the conflict, straining its ears all the while to catch above the din of battle the sound of the voice which would never speak again.
And soon the wave of war passed on, leaving the field deserted; and though the Mahrattas swept by in victorious pursuit of the now routed foe, still as a rock standing out from the ebbing flood was the elephant in its place, with the slain heaped round it, and the standard still floating above its castled back! For three days and nights it remained where it had been told to remain, and neither bribe nor threat would move it, till they sent to the village on the Nerbudda, a hundred miles away, and fetched the mahout’s little son, a round-eyed, lisping child; and then at last the hero of that victorious day, remembering how its dead master had often in brief absence delegated authority to the child, confessed its allegiance, and with the shattered battle harness clanging at each stately stride, swung slowly along the road behind the boy.
