Just then the "little _Sahib_" ran up to see the elephants; and, who
should he be, but the little boy who had lost his way in the Bazaar.
"Look, it is the little _Sahib_ I talked with," exclaimed Chola to
Mahala.
"Hello!" said Harry, holding out his hand. "Oh, I forgot you folk never
shake hands," he continued. "Isn't it funny to think I should see you
again? But this isn't the same boy who was with you before," he
continued, turning to Mahala.
The boys were delighted to see each other again, and soon were talking
away as if they had always known one another, though sometimes it was
hard for them to understand, and they made many funny mistakes.
Harry thought the big elephants were wonderful beasts, and wanted to see
them at work; so the boys took him down to the river where the elephants
were piling up the teak. An elephant picks up one end of a log with his
trunk and lays that on the pile; then he takes hold of the other end
and so brings it around in place. All the while his driver sits on the
neck of the great beast, and tells him what to do by prodding him gently
with his iron-shod stick. After awhile the elephants become so well
trained that they will do their work without any guidance whatever.
Harry was amazed. He had never seen elephants at work before; but it was
an old story to the Hindu boys, and they told him how the elephants were
made to help build roads and railroads, and even carry cannon on their
backs in battle. Elephants are very intelligent, and can be trained to
do the most wonderful things.
"We will go now and see the wonderful elephant of old Yusuf," said
Chola, leading the way to the back of the house, where old Yusuf, the
head driver, lived. Here they saw the funniest sight. Yusuf's baby
grandson lay asleep on a mat in front of the door, and the old elephant
was standing by waving his trunk backwards and forwards over the baby to
keep away the flies.
How the children laughed! "That is the funniest '_ayah_' I have ever
seen," said Harry. An "_ayah_" is the name for the Indian nursemaids.
Old Yusuf now came up and showed them how the elephant would wake up the
_coolies_, or labourers, when they were sleeping in the shade, by
filling his trunk with water and squirting it over the sleeping fellows.
When he wanted his master he would go to the door of his house and knock
against it with his foot, just as a person would knock with his fist,
only a good deal harder.
"Yusuf knows, too, the language that the elephants talk together in the
jungle," whispered Chola to Harry. It really seemed as if the old man
did understand the language of the elephants, for he would speak to the
elephant with strange sounds, and the beast would follow him about like
a dog. "He has taught me to speak some of the elephant talk, also,"
continued Chola, looking very knowing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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