THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARD.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2981, 14 January 1881, Page 4

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARD.

Of the elephant's docility there are abundant anecdotes, and amonp them are some which are really worthy of the sole living representative of the family of the mastodon and the mammoth. Such a one is the old Mabxatta story of the standard-bearing elephant that by its docility won a great victory for its master, the Pliishwa. The huge embattled beast was carrying on its back tno royal ensign, the rallying-jioint of the Poona host; and, at the very commencement of the engagement, the elephant's mahout, just as he had ordered it to halt, received his death-wound and fell off its back. The shock of battle closed round it and the standard it carried, and the uproar of contending armies filled the scene with unusual terrors. But the elephant never moved a yard, refusing to advance or to retire the standard entrusted to it by so much as a step ; and the Mahrattas, seeing the flag still flying in its place, refused to believe tbe day was going against them, and rallied again and again round their immovable standard-bearer. Meanwhile the elephant, stood there, straining its ears all the while to catch above the din of battle the sound of the voice whieli would never speak again. The tempest of war passed on, leaving the field deserted ; and, though the Mahrattas swept by in victorious pursuit of the nowrouted foe, still a* a rock standing out from the ebbing Hood was the elephant in its place, with the slain heaped round it, the standard still floating abore its castled back. For tin*'e days and three nights it remained where it had been told to remain, and neither bribe nor threat could move it, till they sent to the village on the Nerbudda, a hundred miles away, and fetched the mahout's little son, a ronnd eyed lisping child ; and then at last the hero of that victorious day, remembering how the dead mahout, had often in brief absence delegated authority to the child confessed its allegiance, and, with the shattered battle-harness clanging at each stately stride, swung slowly along tbe road behind the toddling boy.