A steamer on the way from Calcutta to Burma with a cargo of 40 elephants has dropped anchor. "It was a hot night and still as death, but presently the steamer began to roll. First she rolled a little and then she began to swing through a circle of about 120 degrees. Up came the Engineer yelling that the engines were being shaken to pieces; up came the Captain crying that his ship would turn turtle if this went on. Who was responsible? They looked into the hold and saw the strangest sight in the world," reports the young voyager, in The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, Volume 1: 1872-1889, edited by Thomas Pinney.
"You know how an elephant is never still. He always rocks as if at anchor wherever he is. These big beasts had discovered that if they all rocked together as they stood, one side of the steamer would tilt down and this appeared to amuse 'em. So twenty elephants (which is to say sixty tons) rocked forward and twenty rocked back and the steamer rolled as if she was on the Madras surf – each swing getting larger and larger. The men in command, sent the mahouts down with all speed to make the elephants break step, lie down, do anything that would stop their dangerous game. But the elephants approved of the see-saw, and the row below was indescribable. The moment a mahout went away, the elephants began rocking again, so the stifling night was filled with the groans of mahouts begging to be allowed to come up on deck for a little."
