Works - Seven Seas Ed. Author:Rudyard Kipling Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MY LORD THE ELEPHANT (1892) 'Less you want your toes trod off you'd better get back at once, For the bullocks are walkin' two by two, The byles are w... more »alkin' two by two, The bullocks are walkin' two by two, An' the elephants bring the guns! HoIYuss! Great—big—long—black forty-pounder guns: Jiggery-jolty to and fro, Each as big as a launch in tow— Blind—dumb—broad-breeched beggars o' batterin' guns! 'Barrack-Room Ballad.' TOUCHING the truth of this tale there need be no doubt at all, for it was told to me by Mul- vaney at the back of the elephant-lines, one warm evening when we were taking the dogs out for exercise. The twelve Government elephants rocked at their pickets outside the big mud-walled stables (one arch, as wide as a bridge-arch, to each restless beast), and the mahouts were preparing the evening meal. Now and again some impatient youngster would smell the cooking flour-cakes and squeal; and the naked littlechildren of the elephant-lines would strut down the row shouting and commanding silence, or, reaching up, would slap at the eager trunks. Then the elephants feigned to be deeply interested in pouring dust upon their heads, but, so soon as the children passed, the rocking, fidgeting, and muttering broke out again. The sunset was dying, and the elephants heaved and swayed dead black against the one sheet of rose-red low down in the dusty gray sky. It was at the beginning of the hot weather, just after the troops had changed into their white clothes, so Mulvaney and Ortheris looked like ghosts walking through the dusk. Learoyd had gone off to another barrack to buy sulphur ointment for his last dog under suspicion of mange, and with delicacy had put his kennel into quarantine at the back of the furnace where they cremate the anthrax cases. ...« less