Colonial Games: Safari to the Psgheti, Page 4

Part Four
Safari to the Psgheti
A Pleasant Outing Spoiled before Lunch

Continued from Part Three

Bill orders the mahout to goad the elephant to a run. It is the last thing the mahout does. As they hurtle toward the ford, a rifle-round from the Fusiliers sends him flying to the ground. The confused elephant stops with its toes in the very water of the ford. Capt. Marvell shouts, "Throw down your arms. You are under arrest!" The reply is a blast from Wilhelm's big-game rifle that partially dismembers the Captain and propels most of him into the murky waters of the Soumbada.

The sepoys and Fusiliers fire. The hail of bullets kills one German trooper and Mehmet's bodyguard, wounds the second elephant and kills the mahout. Enraged and driverless, the elephant charges the sepoys. In the animal's headlong rush through the jungle, the howdah is struck by a tree limb and both Wolfgang Weisenheimer and the loader tumble to earth, bruised but unharmed.

Sgt. Millstone calls out, "For the last time - you are under..." His moment of glory is interrupted by the need to parry the bayonet charge of the last German trooper defending the elephants.

Lt. Sappington, trying desperately to clear his jammed revolver (for all the good it would do!), falls beneath the elephant's huge legs as it crashes through the sepoy line and careens off into the jungle, trumpeting wildly. Havildar Humna orders his men forward to take on Weisenheimer and the loader, but the fight has been knocked out of them, and they immediately surrender.

Frau Eisenschleim hands Wilhelm a freshly loaded rifle as he curses and prods the elephant from the howdah, but the beast is lost without his mahout, and refuses to budge. In frustration Wilhelm fires again into the British ranks.

Brut Seifried comes running up, taking cover on the far side of Wilhelm's elephant, but Havildar Humna is watching, and the sepoys soon have the profiteer backed against the river in surrender.

Abdul, Captain Marvell's gunbearer, is in a state of shock at seeing his master shot through by a heavy rifle round not three feet in front of him. He now comes to his senses, and finds himself still holding the Captain's elephant gun. Though he has never fired a rifle before, he can hardly miss at this distance, as long as he aims at the elephant.

He palms back both hammers, puts the stock lightly to his shoulder and pulls the triggers fully to the rear. He does not hear the deafening roar as he is hurled backward and spun around with a sledgehammer impact to his shoulder and face, but half-rising from the ground, he sees Wilhelm's elephant sink to its left knee and then topple slowly sideways.

Seifried and one of the sepoys look up too late, as the animal's huge bulk rolls over, crushing them into the earth, but Havildar Humna did not make Havildar by being slow on the uptake, and he leaps backward to safety just as the huge carcass comes down on the spot where he stood. He has barely time to utter "Thanks be to God," when he is knocked to the ground by a leg. The leg is attached to the body of Wilhelm Eisenschleim, which is in turn attached to the head of Wilhelm Eisenschleim, albeit rather too loosely, the Havildar notes. The notorious German administrator breathes his last in the mud of a riverbank half a world away from his birthplace. After a moment, the Havildar hears the distant voice of one of the troopers saying, "The lady is dead as well, Sergeant."

Sgt. Millstone has no time to be concerned with what the Kaiser's reaction will be. That is something that the Foreign Secretary will have to deal with. Right now he has wounded men to attend to, and the biggest cleanup job of his life to supervise. "Mauser rifles, bleedin' buffaloes, a tiger, an' the end o' Bungalo Bill. Well, Jack, lad," he whispers to himself, "Y've earned yer shillin' today." Then, looking at Frau Eisenschleim's motionless form, "I'll 'ave to remember to write me Mum."

Outcome
The affair was a victory, though not a resounding victory, for the British. (They should have lost the game simply because they cravenly left Trooper Howard behind, battling the tiger. Very un-English, that. Fortunately Capt. Marvell would never have the opportunity for regret.) They had killed Wilhelm and Mehmet, when it would have been far better to capture them, and captured two of the trespassers (Seifried turned out to be alive when they dug him out from under the elephant; the soft river mud had saved him. There was never a situation he could not wriggle out of. He managed to sell Sgt. Millstone a set of elevator-shoe inserts on the march back to the post.)

But the cost was the life of Frau Eisenschleim the Kaiser's friend, who died in the fall from the elephant. There was much sticky diplomatic maneuvering to do in the wake of that event; however, with the German command structure at Bungalo in chaos, the British were able to move in troops and establish a small fortified outpost, cementing their hold on the Psgheti. Under the care of the English nurses who were most, ah, impressed by a man who could survive an elephant, Von Strickland eventually healed, and was finally traded in a prisoner exchange for two chinless British quartermaster officers and Gen. Rederring's beloved Bedlington terrier. And as Mehmet Wuwoob's heirs fell to squabbling over his ill-gotten empire, the natives of the region had a few years of peace from the depredations of the slavers.

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Safari to the Psgheti

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