loves and of the which means black snake had served the indian government in every way that an elephant could serve it for years and as he was fully twenty years old when he was caught that makes him nearly seventy � a ripe age for an elephant he remembered pushing with a big leather on his forehead at a gun stuck in deep mud and that was before the war of and he had not then come to his full strength his mother � the darling � who had been caught in the same drive with told him before his little milk had dropped out that who were afraid always got i the book hurt and knew that that advice was good for the first time that he saw a shell burst he backed screaming into a stand of piled and the pricked him in all his places so before he was twenty five he gave up being afraid and so he was the best loved and the best looked after elephant in the service of the government of india he had carried tents twelve hundred pounds weight of tents on the march in upper india he had been hoisted into a ship at the end of a steam and taken for days across the water and made to carry a mortar on his back in a strange and rocky country very far from india and had seen the emperor lying dead in and had come back again in the steamer entitled so the soldiers said to the war he had seen his fellow die of cold and and starvation and up at a place called ten years later and afterward he had been sent down thousands of miles south to haul and pile big of in the timber yards at there he had half killed an young elephant who was his fair share of the work after that he was taken off timber and employed with a few score other of the who were trained to the business in helping to catch wild among the hills are very strictly preserved by the indian government there is one whole department which does nothing else but hunt them and catch them and break them in and send them up and down the country as they are needed for work stood ten fair feet at the shoulders and his had been cut off short at five feet and bound round the ends to prevent them with bands of copper but he could do more with those than any elephant could do with the real sharpened ones when after weeks and weeks of cautious driving of scattered across the hills the forty or fifty wild monsters were driven into the last and the big drop gate made of tree trunks lashed together down behind them at the word of command would go into that generally at night when the of the made it difficult to judge distances and picking out the biggest and wildest of the mob would hammer him and him into quiet while the men on the backs of the other and tied the smaller ones the book there was nothing in the way of fighting that the old wise black snake did not know for he had stood up more than once in his time to the charge of the wounded tiger and curling up his soft trunk to be out of harm s way had knocked the springing brute sideways in mid air with a quick cut of his head that he had invented all by himself had knocked him over and upon him with his huge knees till the life went out with a gasp and a howl and there was only a striped thing on the ground for to pull by the tail yes said big his driver the son of black who had taken him to and of of the who had seen him caught there is nothing that the black snake fears except me he has seen three generations of us feed him and groom him and he will live to see four he is afraid of me also said little standing up to his full height of four feet with only one rag upon him he was ten years old the eldest son of big and according to custom he would take his father s place on s neck when he grew up and would handle the heavy iron the elephant that had of the been worn smooth by his father and his grandfather and his great grandfather he knew what he was talking of for he had been born under s shadow had played with the end of his trunk before he could walk had taken him down to water as soon as he could walk and would no more have dreamed of his shrill little orders than he would have dreamed of killing him on that day when big carried the little brown baby under and told him to salute his master that was to be yes said little he is afraid of me and he took long strides up to called him a fat old pig and made him lift up his feet one after the other said little thou art a big elephant and he his head quoting his father the government may pay for but they belong to us when thou art old there will come some rich and he will buy thee from the government on account of thy size and thy manners and then thou wilt have nothing to do but to carry gold in thy ears and a gold on thy back and a red cloth covered with gold on thy sides and walk at the head of the the of the king then i shall sit on thy neck o with a silver and men will run before us with golden sticks crying room for the king s elephant that will be good but 