Thus matters stood when one of the elephant-keepers whom Miss Ellen had brought with her to the Kenia, and who had given up all thoughts of returning to their home, ventured to ask his 'mistress'--for the Indians could not accustom themselves to the idea that they were perfectly independent men--whether she would not like an elephant-baby also as a pet? Receiving an affirmative answer, he undertook to capture one or more, if he were allowed to go with the four elephants and their keepers into the woods for a few days. As Miss Ellen had allowed her elephants to be employed in the building operations, where these interesting colossi were of invaluable service, and as the work could not be interrupted for the sake of a plaything, she told the Indian that she would forego her wish, or at least would wait until the elephants could be more easily spared from the work. The Indian went away, but the idea that his beloved mistress should be deprived of anything that would--as he had at once perceived--have given her great pleasure, roused him out of his customary fatalistic indolence. He brooded over the matter for a couple of days, and on the third he appeared with the proposal to make good the loss of time occasioned by the temporary absence of the four elephants by capturing, with the aid of the other Cornaks, not only a young elephant, but also several old elephants, and training them for work. 'But African elephants cannot be trained like the Indian ones,' objected Miss Ellen. The Indian ventured to question this, and his seven colleagues were all of his opinion. Elephants were elephants; they would like to see an animal with a trunk that they could not tame in a few weeks if he only got into their hands. 'If it is really so, why have you not said so before; for you must have seen what good use can be made of elephants here?' asked the American, and received for answer merely a laconic 'Because you have not asked us.'
Miss Ellen did not know what to do. The idea of furnishing the colony of Eden Vale with herds of tame elephants--for if these animals could be tamed, there might as well be thousands as one--did not allow her to rest. On the other hand, she remembered to have read, in her natural-history studies, that African elephants were untameable. We all, when she asked us, were obliged to affirm that there were no tame elephants anywhere in Africa. She thought over this problem until she began to grow melancholy; evidently she was anxious that a trial should be made. But the Indians insisted upon the impossibility of capturing wild elephants without the assistance of the tame ones; and she shrank the more from using the latter in a doubtful attempt at a time when work urgently required doing, because the tame elephants were her own property, and therefore the decision depended entirely upon herself. Just then our zoologist, Signor Michaele Faënze, returned from a long excursion to the central mass of the Kenia; and when Miss Fox took him into her confidence, he at once sided with the Indians. He admitted that, as a matter of fact, there were no tame African elephants; but he maintained that this was simply because the Africans had forgotten how to make the noble beast serviceable to man. The reason did not lie in the character of the African elephant, for in the days of the Romans trained elephants were as well known in Africa as in Asia. They should let the Indians make an attempt; if the latter understood their business they would succeed as well in Africa as in India.
And so it turned out. The eight Cornaks with their four elephants went into the neighbouring forests; and when, as soon happened, they had found a herd of wild elephants, they did with them exactly as they had learnt to do at home. The tame elephants were sent without their attendants into the midst of the herd of wild ones, by whom they were at first greeted with some signs of surprise, but were ultimately received into companionship. The crafty animals then fixed their attention upon the leader of the herd, the strongest and handsomest bull, caressed him, whisked the flies off him, but in the meantime bound, with some strong cord they had taken with them, one of his legs to a stout tree. Having done this, they uttered their cry of alarm--a sharp trumpet-like sound--and ran off as if they had discovered some danger. On this signal, the Indians rushed forward with loud cries and the firing of guns, and thus caused the whole herd to rush off after the tame elephants. The poor prisoner, of course, could not run off with the rest, desperately as he strained at the ropes; and the Indians allowed him to stamp and trumpet, without for a while troubling themselves about him. Their next care was to follow the track of the escaped herd. In the course of an hour they had again crept up to it, to find that in the meantime the four tame elephants had repeated the same trick with a new victim, which was also fettered and then left in the same manner. In the course of the day three more elephants shared the same fate; and by that time the herd appeared to have grown suspicious, for their betrayers returned alone to their keepers.
Now first was a visit paid to the five captives, among whom was a female with a yearling about the size of a half-grown calf. The tame elephants went straight to the captives straining at the ropes, and bound their fore-feet tightly together. This was not done without furious resistance on the part of the betrayed beasts; but this resistance was overcome in a most brutal way by strokes of the trunk and by bites. Thereupon the merciless captors busied themselves removing from within their victims' reach everything that is pleasant to an elephant's palate--grass, bushes, and tree-twigs; and what their trunks could not do they enabled the keepers to do with axe and hatchet by dragging the captives down upon their sides.
When night came, all five captives were securely bound and deprived of every possibility of getting food. They were watched, however, to secure them from being attacked by lions or leopards. The next morning the tame elephants again visited their captive brethren one after the other, helped the fallen ones to get up--which was not effected without a good deal of thrashing and pushing--and then again left them to their fate.
This went on for three days; the poor captives suffered from hunger and thirst, and received barbarous blows from their treacherous brethren whenever the latter came near them. By the fourth day they had become so weak and subdued that they no longer roared, but pitifully moaned when their tormentors approached, which nevertheless fell upon them fiercely with trunk and teeth. Now a rescuing angel appeared to them, in human form. An Indian, with threatening actions and several noisy blows, drove the captors from their victim, and offered to the latter a vessel of water. If the wild elephant, struck with astonishment, took time to survey the situation, the tragi-comedy was over--the beast was tamed. For, in this case, he would, after a little hesitation, accept the proffered drink, and then a little food; he could afterwards be fed and watered without danger, and, under the escort of the tame elephants, led home for further training. If, on the contrary, the sight of the man maddened him--as was the case with three out of the five--the thrashing-and-hunger treatment had to be continued until the elephant began to understand that release from his situation could be afforded only by the terrible biped.
At last all the captives submitted to their fate. The only danger in this process consists in the necessity, on the part of the hunter, of relying upon the accuracy of his judgment concerning the captive's character when he first approaches him. It is true that the tame elephants stand by observant and ready to help; but as a single thrust of the tusk of an enraged animal may be fatal, the business requires a great deal of courage and presence of mind. However, the Indians asserted that anyone only partially accustomed to the ways of elephants could tell with certainty from the look of the animal what he meant to do; it was therefore necessary merely to take the precaution not to get very close to a captive elephant before reading in his eye submission to the inevitable, and then there was nothing to fear.
After an absence of six days, the expedition returned with the five captives, which were certainly not yet trained and serviceable for work, but were so far tame that they quietly allowed themselves to be shut up, fed, watered, and taught. In the course of another fortnight they were ready for use in all kinds of work, particularly when they had one of the veterans by their side. Miss Ellen had a double triumph: she possessed a charming baby elephant, which was certainly a little too clumsy for a lap-dog, but was nevertheless as droll a creature as could be, and soon made itself the acknowledged favourite of all Eden Vale; and she had besides opened out for the Society an inexhaustible source of very valuable motive power, of which no one would have thought but for her.
From that time forth we actively carried on the capture of elephants, so that in a little while the elephant was the chief draught-beast in the Kenia, and could be employed wherever heavy weights had to be removed to short