The elephants were, as I said, in a line formed with admirable precision, about three hundred of them. The following little diagram will explain matters:--
E is the line of elephants. F is the wall of the fort. G a gun in the fort. NOW the reader will see what I did.
The elephants were standing, their trunks waggling to and fro gracefully before them; and I, with superhuman skill and activity, brought the gun G (a devilish long brass gun) to bear upon them. I pointed it myself; bang! it went, and what was the consequence? Why, this:--
X ____________________ |__G .................... | E | | | | F
F is the fort, as before. G is the gun, as before. E, the elephants, as we have previously seen them. What then is X? X IS THE LINE TAKEN BY THE BALL FIRED FROM G, which took off ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR elephants' trunks, and only spent itself in the tusk of a very old animal, that stood the hundred and thirty-fifth.
I say that such a shot was never fired before or since; that a gun was never pointed in such a way. Suppose I had been a common man, and contented myself with firing bang at the head of the first animal? An ass would have done it, prided himself had he hit his mark, and what would have been the consequence? Why, that the ball might have killed two elephants and wounded a third; but here, probably, it would have stopped, and done no further mischief. The TRUNK was the place at which to aim; there are no bones there; and away, consequently, went the bullet, shearing, as I have said, through one hundred and thirty-five probosces. Heavens! what a howl there was when the shot took effect! What a sudden stoppage of Holkar's speech! What a hideous snorting of elephants! What a rush backwards was made by the whole army, as if some demon was pursuing them!
Away they went. No sooner did I see them in full retreat, than, rushing forward myself, I shouted to my men, “My friends, yonder lies your dinner!” We flung open the gates--we tore down to the spot where the elephants had fallen: seven of them were killed; and of those that escaped to die of their hideous wounds elsewhere, most had left their trunks behind them. A great quantity of them we seized; and I myself, cutting up with my scimitar a couple of the fallen animals, as a butcher would a calf, motioned to the men to take the pieces back to the fort, where barbacued elephant was served round for dinner, instead of the miserable allowance of an olive and a glass of wine, which I had promised to my female friends, in my speech to them. The animal reserved for the ladies was a young white one--the fattest and tenderest I ever ate, in my life: they are very fair eating, but the flesh has an India-rubber flavor, which, until one is accustomed to it, is unpalatable.