Ch. 27: Moti Guj-Mutineer

Once upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear
some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the trees
and burned the under-wood the stumps still remained. Dynamite is
expensive and slow-fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the
lord of all beats, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump
out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with
ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and
threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to
the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and the superior beast's
name was Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which
would never have been the case under native rule, for Moti Guj was a
creature to be desired by kings; and his name, being translated, meant
the Pearl Elephant. Because the British Government was in the land,
Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated.
When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he
would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg
over the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life
out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was
over Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and
his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti Guj
was very fond of liquor--arrack for choice, though he would drink palm-
tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep
between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of
the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him and would not
permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa
saw fit to wake up.

There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter's clearing: the
wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj's neck and gave him
orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps--for he owned a magnificent
pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope--for he had a magnificent
pair of shoulders, while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he
was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his
three hundred pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and
Deesa would take a share and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it
was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river,
and Moti Guj lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa
went over him with a coir-swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the
pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the former that warned him
to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his
feet, and examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes