FAZUL THE MAHOUT. 239 



tusker at Dacca. We were up at kheddah-work in 

 the north when Luxa, a large tusker we had caught 

 the previous season, went must and killed Pichee, 

 his Mug mahout. Pichee was a bay coop (fool). He 

 drank muddut (smoked opium). When Luxa was 

 must, instead of giving it the opium served out by 

 the jemadar for must-elephants, Pichee stole it and 

 made muddut. In his drunken fits he beat Luxa 

 with a bamboo when taking it to water. Luxa 

 stamped on him and killed him, and ran off into 

 the jungles. We give our elephants twelve seers of 

 paddy every day. In the jungles Luxa got no 

 paddy, so it went to the villages at night and smelled 

 out the place where the villagers keep the paddy in 

 baskets in a corner of their huts. It would quietly 

 pull off the thatch, put its trunk down into the 

 basket and suck up its trunk full of paddy and blow 

 the paddy into its mouth. After emptying the 

 basket, it would go to another hut and do the same. 

 One night while stealing paddy, the man of the 

 house got up, and thinking there was a thief there 

 he stabbed the elephant in its trunk with his spear. 

 The elephant ran off with a scream and was not 

 seen again for a week. The next time it came it 

 pulled down the house and killed a couple of vil- 

 lagers, and when they all ran away it quietly took 

 possession of the village and remained there till all 

 the rice was eaten ; then it would go off and attack 

 another village. 



" In this way it had killed many persons and looted 

 several villages, when Sanderson Sahib determined 

 to recapture it. Motee Goocha and two of the best 



