The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul

by Albert Robida

  Pots of white lead were distributed on the ground; armed with gigantic brushes, they were struggling to cover a large elephant with paint while it ate sugar-lumps from the king’s hand. Their work was progressing; already the elephant was three-quarters transformed into a sacred elephant. Only the head remained; that was the most difficult part. Farandoul took charge of it personally, and while the legs were being finished off, he distempered the cranium and trunk of the intelligent animal with infinite artistry and an attention to shading that would have made a miniaturist jealous.

  Finally, the work of art, completed by a few brightening touches, seemed worthy of being submitted to the admiration of the Siamese in the temple and the residence of the disappeared white elephant. In consequence, they made a surreptitious exit from the stables, and conducted it to the temple without being spotted. The monarch, fully satisfied, declared that the illusion was complete at ten paces and that, were it not for a rather strong odor of paint, any Siamese who had not been forewarned would take the falsely-tinted elephant for the true white elephant. To remedy the odor of paint, Farandoul had a large quantity of incense burned in cassolettes distributed in front of the elephant.

  Everything was ready; the slaves, informed of the miraculous return of the white elephant, came running and delivered themselves to raptures of adoration. The news soon reached the gates; when the king came to the main gate in person to harangue the Amazon regiment and inform them of the elephant’s return, the Amazons threw themselves to their knees with signs of the most earnest repentance.

  The revolt was appeased. A long queue of people, controlled by the Amazons, came in the most orderly fashion to present its respects to the sacred elephant, returned by courtesy of a miracle of the Buddha.

  Farandoul and his mariners, armed and equipped, were preparing to leave the palace, having received the congratulations and encouragements of the king. Definitively abandoning the sacred apartments, they met up with the Amazon regiment under the porticoes. This time, the entire regiment welcomed them with the greatest possible enthusiasm; public opinion attributed to them the honor of having recovered the white elephant. In spite of their modest protestations, the Amazons wanted to carry them in triumph, and whether they liked it or not, they had to make a triple circuit around the elephant’s temple on the shoulders of the joyous Amazons.

  A long procession of the faithful was filing through the interior, its members prostrating themselves before the immobile elephant in the midst of incense-fumes. Just as Farandoul and his sailors were passing in front of the temple door for the third time, carried by the delirious Amazons, two individuals came rapidly down the steps and threw themselves into the midst of the procession. They were the minister of the police Nao-Ching and the colonel of the Amazons. The colonel and the minister pronounced a few curt words; all of a sudden, the clamors of joy turned into cries of horror, and the mariners found themselves choked beneath a heap of assailants. Before they knew what was happening, they were stripped of their weapons, their arms and legs were secured with solid ropes or shackled, and they were gagged.

  Fatality! Caught up in the Amazons’ fit of enthusiasm, our friends had quit the palace and delivered themselves into the grip of their enemies. What had happened? What circumstance had changed the joy of the Siamese to furious anger? Nothing that could have been foreseen. The Siamese might easily had gone several weeks or months without discovering the fraud, but the tenebrous Nao-Ching, the mandarin of the police, had not been content to honor the sacred elephant with a few distant genuflections. In his capacity as a high-ranking individual, he had climbed over the balustrade intended to keep the common people at a respectful distance and, quietly approaching the incarnation of the Buddha, had drawn a suspicious finger over its rump. Horror! The finger had come back covered in white lead! Nao-Ching, summoning the colonel of the Amazons, had then made her pass her hand over the elephant’s flank. The colonel had leapt backwards; her five fingers had left distinct marks on the sacred flank….

  Everything was discovered; the respects of the faithful were being addressed to an imitation white elephant. At this news, an immense clamor had burst forth in the temple and…you know the rest.

  Thrown into a corner under the guard of a platoon of Amazons, Farandoul, Mandibul and the mariners contemplated their situation despairingly. Tournesol, especially, infinitely regretted leaving the sacred apartments. The adventure had turned decidedly sour; would not the sentences passed by Siamese justice be executed at its next session? As the populace invaded the place, threatening to put an end to the uncertainty of the condemned men, the colonel of the Amazons ran in and ordered that they be transported to the monumental barracks established between the third and fourth walls of the palace.

  The unfortunates, loaded on to a few elephants, soon arrived at the barracks and were rudely deposited in the Amazons’ guardroom, which was completely empty that day. Farandoul, whose eyes were the only part of his body at liberty, searched among his companions in captivity for Mandibul, but in vain; Mandibul was not there. The colonel, reserving the privilege of interrogating him for herself, had placed him in a separate room, whose key she had kept.

  Night fell during this interval. A contingent of Amazon guards remained in the barracks, while the others went out to guard the palace, which was still plunged into the most complete disarray.

  The colonel, remaining in the barracks, paced feverishly back and forth in her office; a terrible preoccupation had laid siege to her thoughts, evident in her furious gestures. About 10 p.m., she appeared to reach a decision and abruptly went out with a lantern and a bunch of keys. Where was she going? And why was she darting suspicious glances in all directions?

  The silence reigning in the barracks was only troubled by the rhythmic march of the sentry outside and sonorous snoring emerging from the large room in which Mandibul had been locked. It was to this room that the colonel directed her steps. She was presumably about to begin our friend’s interrogation. She opened the door abruptly. Mandibul, with his arms and legs bound and forcefully gagged, was asleep on the floor.

  The colonel studied him for a few minutes; then, suddenly bending down, she deposited a kiss on his serene forehead! The snoring suddenly ceased. Mandibul opened his eyes. His gag preventing him from uttering any cry of astonishment, he made no sound, but seemed evidently disconcerted.

  The colonel thought she could read a bitter reproach in Mandibul’s eyes. She drew her sword and freed him from his gag.

  “Oof!” said Mandibul.

  The colonel set the lantern down and sat down on the floor beside Mandibul. All her pride had disappeared, along with her military bearing. Beneath the colonel’s uniform, a woman’s heart was beating at a hectic pace. Haven’t you already guessed? In their first conversation under the great gateway of the palace, Mandibul had made a deep impression on the colonel. Finding him in unfortunate circumstances, under the threat of 800 condemnations to death, she wanted to sweeten the bitterness of his final hours.

  The conversation began in Siamese, of which Mandibul did not understand a word. He replied in French, which was equally incomprehensible to her. What was she saying? What did he reply? It is supposable that she made warm declarations, but we cannot swear to it, having been, like Mandibul, brought up in ignorance of the Siamese language. He replied in French that the cords securing his arms were causing him too much pain for him to give all the attention to her speech that it deserved, and that perhaps he would understand better with his hands free. The colonel understood to some degree, the mind of a woman being so finely-tuned. She hesitated briefly; then as her heartbeat accelerated further, she did what our friend desired. Mandibul had recovered the use of his arms. The first use that he made of his relative liberty was to seize the colonel’s arms.

  Presumably, he was about to thank her by kissing both her hands—at least, the colonel closed her eyes. The ever-gallant Mandibul, always the French chevalier, did not entirely neglect the duty required of h
im, but, having brushed the warrior woman’s velvety epidermis with his lips, he held both hands in a solid grip and rapidly tied them together with the cords detached from his own wrists.

  It was the colonel’s turn to seem disconcerted. Mandibul left her stunned with amazement and took her sword to cut the bonds securing his legs. He was free!

  A quarter of an hour later, an Amazon colonel carrying a lantern and a bunch of keys emerged from the room on tiptoe. This colonel was Mandibul. The real colonel was inside, carefully trussed up, and Mandibul, dressed in her uniform, went in search of his friends. Fortunately, he had seen them locked up in the guard-room and knew where to find them.

  The most difficult thing was to discover the key to their prison in the bunch; finally, Mandibul put his hand on it and got into the room where his friends were lying, victims of cruel anguish. An immense astonishment was appeared in the prisoners’ eyes on seeing Mandibul transformed into am Amazon. The latter lost no time in rapidly cutting their bonds.

  Poor Tournesol was the last. Mandibul took pleasure in tormenting him: “My poor Tournesol, prepare to submit to your punishment—we were only able to obtain facilities for our escape on condition that we left you for the satisfaction of the judges.”

  When Tournesol and the interpreter were freed with the rest it became a matter of getting out of the barracks. Mandibul had a plan. He had just observed the store-room of the quartermaster in change of dressing the Amazon regiment; he took his friends there and told them to imitate him by dressing in Siamese uniforms.

  While the mariners were getting dressed, Mandibul and his bunch of keys continued their search. In the colonel’s room, our friend had the good fortune to find all the company’s weapons. He came back down with revolvers and cartridges, and found everyone ready. “Now let’s make ourselves scarce!” he said.

  “Just a moment,” said Farandoul. “We need elephants, to protect us from pursuits.”

  “The great park is nearby. We’ll have the choice of the garrison’s 300 elephants.”

  “Let’s go!”

  They got out of the barracks without difficulty. The sentinel, recognizing the colonel’s lantern and uniform, presented arms to the mariners, who made themselves as inconspicuous as possible.

  The elephants’ great park was to the left; the little troop presented itself boldly before the drowsy unit that was guarding it, captured the sentry and made the others out down their weapons.

  Six elephants were soon chosen from among the finest. The mariners were about to install themselves in their palanquins when Farandoul stopped them. “At daybreak,” he said, “our enemies will launch themselves in our pursuit on the elephants we leave here. The roads are unfamiliar to us; they’ll catch us up. We mustn’t risk having the entire Siamese army on our back tomorrow.”

  “But what can we do?”

  “There’s one way. Elephants have their vices too! It’s those vices that will give us our security.”

  “What vices?”

  “Drunkenness! A keen appetite for strong liquor! That vice is encountered in all superior creatures, as in man: monkeys, elephants…it’s sad, but what can one say? It’s the way it is. Elephants are good, honest and, above all, hard-working, but they love to be rewarded for their labors with a few little sweeteners. By promising elephants a few pints of cognac or fermented coconut, one obtains a greater sum of work by accelerating their march.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, somewhere in the park there must be a stock of fermented coconut milk; we must find it, and our enemies won’t be able to pursue us tomorrow.”

  The officer from the guard-unit, interrogated, pointed to the alcoholic liquor store. The door was soon forced and the delighted Farandoul discovered large vats full of alcoholic beverages.

  “Quickly! A bucketful of that liquor to each elephant! We’ll keep a few bottles back for our own.”

  The sailors, understanding that their salvation depended on it, hastened to carry out Farandoul’s orders. A chain was organized as if for a fire, and buckets full of liquid were carried to the elephants. The latter, delighted with the windfall, demonstrated their respect for their benefactors by accepting the buckets politely with their trunks and emptying them internally with shudders of sensuous pleasure. In similar circumstances of a gratuitous distribution of strong liquor, many men would have rushed the distributors en masse, and would have been sure to spill a large proportion of the liquid, but the elephants—serious and very reasonable creatures even in their minor bouts of debauchery—did not act in this way. The distribution was carried out in the most orderly fashion; none of them tried to drink out of turn. It was merely the case that the neighbors of those which sipped a little too lengthily begged them, by means of a few amicable taps of the trunk, to accelerate their ingurgitation.

  Soon, each of the 300 or 310 elephants had swallowed its three bucketfuls of liquid. A few of them, with family responsibilities, had even had five or six; as prudent fathers, they had not wanted to permit their children more than two measures, and had awarded the surplus to themselves.

  Another bucketful per head was distributed; already many of the elephants were sleeping blissfully, dead drunk, or surrendering themselves to 1000 eccentricities; the last bucketful finished the job. The entire camp lost its head. Order disappeared, gravity evaporated, and even the old ones suddenly felt an impulse to frolic madly running through their heads.

  The mariners could now leave without fear; the elephants, abominably drunk, would require two or three days to sleep off the fermented coconut milk.

  The six elephants that Farandoul had reserved, a trifle lit up by the alcoholic fumes, watched the scene enviously. To give them an incentive, Farandoul distributed a quarter of a bucketful to each of them, and gave the signal to depart.

  The agile seamen scaled the high rumps of their mounts and installed themselves, three to each animal—one on the neck to serve as a mahout or driver, and two in the palanquin. Farandoul, Mandibul and the interpreter took the lead, and entire troop departed north-westwards.

  Sitting on his elephant, Farandoul studied a map of the Siamese peninsula by the light of a lantern. His intention was to head straight for Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of the kingdom of Siam, now in ruins, to go up the great river Me-Nam, the “mother of waters,” as far as Bank-Ta, where they could cross a ford in order to head for Burma.

  A few words overheard by the interpreter in a conversation between the mandarin of the police and the Amazon colonel, and reported to Farandoul, had made him decide to take that direction.

  “The white elephant, if my agents’ reports are not mistaken,” the mandarin had said, “must have been sold by the thieves to the Emperor of Burma. It has reportedly been seen in one of the pagodas of Amarapura.”

  Amarapura , a city situated on the Irrawaddy, the great Burmese river, 250 leagues from Bangkok, was therefore the objective of our friends’ journey. It was a matter of arriving there incognito, searching the temples, discovering the elephant and taking possession of it in order to return it to its rightful owner. The thing was simple, if not easy.

  Needless to say, our friends were not pursued at all by the Siamese army. The mandarin of the police, however, had taken a great pleasure in busying himself during the night with the preparations for the execution. The executioners were ready, and from daybreak onwards the stake destined for Tournesol’s impalement was surrounded by an excited crowd. When the condemned men did not appear at the hour prescribed by the Amazon colonel, the mandarin had only to make a short journey to the barracks, where he arrived just in time to liberate the colonel, who was prey to a violent attack of nerves.

  Escaped! The guilty parties had escaped! The general immediately had the drums beaten to call the troops to arms, and the army had raced to the elephant park. What a spectacle! The entire park was plunged into a state of indescribable intoxication.

  It took three days to bring the elephants to their senses, and after three days, pur
suit was futile because the condemned men undoubtedly had a start of more than 100 leagues.

  The colonel paid the price, and was stripped of her rank. Soon, however, on receiving the news that the condemned men had arrived in Burma and were searching all the pagodas in search of the white elephant, a change of opinion was brought about, and calmer minds invested all their hopes in the brave mariners they had wanted to decapitate 800 times over. Only the mandarin of the police had departed in their wake with a few men, on elephants of his own.

  Our friends, traveling at top speed, only required 12 days to cover the distance between Bangkok and for Burmese towns of the Irrawaddy. The journey was certainly not without its difficulties, but they were long accustomed to overcoming all obstacles and never turning back. The temples of Amarapura were all visited, without result; there was no trace of the white elephant there.

  At Ava, they had better luck. A few indications of the passage of the sacred animal were gathered there; finally, absolutely reliable information convinced Farandoul that the elephant was to be found at the great pagoda of Pagam.

  The order for departure was immediately given. They came in sight of their goal. Farandoul and four mariners went into Pagam as scouts while the rest of the company remained in the jungle. As soon as they entered the town, they noticed an extraordinary excitement, an inexpressible desolation similar in every respect to that into which Bangkok had been plunged on their arrival. It was necessary to discover its cause; a European trader encountered by chance gave Farandoul the solution to the mystery: the white elephant, bought by the Emperor of Burma a few days previously from Siamese pirates, for four millions, and solemnly placed in the great pagoda of Pagam, had just disappeared, doubtless re-stolen by those same Siamese.

  Farandoul and the European trader headed for the pagoda where the theft had been committed to try to find some clue. The bonzes and the Burmese mandarins consented to let them visit the pagoda and gather all the information they desired. After two hours of scrupulous investigation, Farandoul left the temple without having discovered anything. The theft of the elephant had been effected, as in Bangkok, with prodigious skill; the priests and slaves charged with guarding it had slept inexplicably deeply that night; no one had seen or heard anything!