WILLIAMS LOATHED THE IDEA OF LEAVING THE FOREST, ESPECIALLY to return to Harding’s camp. “Naturally,” he wrote, “when I arrived I got the greeting I expected: sarcastic remarks.” The first issue the old man confronted him about was one that seemed to have taken place a lifetime ago: the death of Pin Wa. Harding taunted him, saying Pin Wa must have been crushed under the weight of Williams’s kit, overstuffed with the novice’s gadgets, clothes, and books.
Williams had seen young male elephants in the logging camps shove back if bumped by another male. After three months among the bulls, he was primed for this conversation.
“I’m surprised she lasted as long as she did,” Williams replied, looking squarely at Harding, “considering that her liver was riddled with flukes and her heart was so enlarged.”
Harding wheeled on him. “How do you know how big an elephant’s heart ought to be?”
“I shot a wild tusker that Tha Yauk told me was forty years old, and I did a post-mortem on him in order to see how the organs of a healthy elephant compared with hers,” Williams said. The heart of a healthy animal should be about fifty pounds.
Surprisingly, the old curmudgeon did not react with fury. In fact, Williams noticed that he actually looked pleased.
Though Harding did admire Williams’s seriousness and inquiry about elephants, the shooting of an elephant on its own wasn’t something that made him happy. “Don’t make a practice of it,” he said. Williams quickly discovered that Harding, as crusty and unsentimental as he seemed, had no patience with so-called big game hunters. In fact, “he felt far more sympathy with any creature which was part of his jungle than with any new arrival.”
It would take Williams only a short time to agree. After the first elephant he shot, there would be at least two more: another in the interest of science, and one a rampaging elephant. By the time he shot the rogue, he was a changed man. The action had been necessary, but once it was done, he dropped his rifle, doubled over, and vomited with fear and remorse. Just a little over a year in Burma, he would be done with such behavior for good. Later in life, Williams said it was hard for him to believe there was ever a time when “I allowed the thrill of big game shooting to dim my eyes to the fact that [the elephants] were God’s own.” He said his only consolation was that it actually helped him develop “as deep a reverence for the jungles and all in them as anyone possibly could.” Ultimately, he came to feel that big game hunting was a product of fear, not courage.
It was all part of making sense of his life in Burma. Things were coming together so quickly that on his return from his very first jungle tour, he had one-upped Harding. That night when darkness fell, the familiar two bottles of black label whiskey were set out with glasses. Something had shifted, though. There was peace. Williams looked across the table at his boss, who was settled in his camp chair, his very English face looking even ruddier in the glow of the flames. “That evening I became a companion with whom he could enjoy rational conversation,” Williams wrote, “instead of an interloper who had to be bullied and kept in his place.” In particular, “the way I had pleased him was by my interest in the elephants.”
Moved by the new sense of camaraderie, Williams showed Harding the sketches in his diary and some of the feathers of the jungle fowl he had shot for food. The evening was so convivial that Harding insisted on gin before they graduated to double rations of whiskey.
Williams had not forgotten his vow to drink Harding under the table. So he matched the old man, glass for glass.
After several hours, Harding slumped unconscious in his chair. The moment the boss’s chin touched his chest, Williams felt unexpectedly sorry for the crumpled figure. To avoid embarrassing the senior man, he slipped away to his tent, securing the canvas flap open so he could watch the snoring figure from his cot. Harding looked small, old, vulnerable. Finally, the dozing man shuddered and then stood. But rather than heading to his bed, he stumbled toward the campfire and toppled over into the flames. Williams sprang from his tent, reaching his boss just as he was reflexively rolling away. The skin of Harding’s arm was already charred bloody and black. Williams pulled his boss to his feet.
Now nose-to-nose with Harding, Williams took in his sour, boozy breath. The old man spit out his words: “What the hell are you doing? Do you insinuate that I am drunk?”
Williams was shocked. “No. But you’ve burned your arm badly.”
Told to mind his own business and get back in the tent, Williams stomped away, shouting: “Well, if you fall again, I shall let you sizzle.”
For the next several days, camp was a sullen, silent place. It must have galled him, but eventually Harding was forced to request Williams’s help in dressing his burned limb. As the two men sat close, with Williams ministering to the tender, blistered skin, the fragile friendship began to knit back together.
About this time, Williams found out by chance that he had passed his first probation. Harding never mentioned it, but the recruit saw his note to headquarters, which merely said that Williams “would do.”
A few days later, as Williams prepared to leave again for his forest travels, Harding pulled him aside for a talk over drinks. Forest assistants became invaluable by focusing on specific aspects of the work, he said. And it had occurred to him some time before that no one had taken up a serious study of elephant management. That had always been a Burmese expertise, not a British one. Clearly, Williams had the interest and talent to fill the gap.
Here was his ally. Williams was gratified to discover that Harding wasn’t as oblivious as he liked to appear. The creatures who fascinated Williams would be his life’s work and the route to something else he yearned for: advancement in the company. His ambition and passion would be on the same trajectory. He could now establish a humane standard of care for elephants and outline what needed to change most urgently. Williams spoke at length about his ideas.
He wanted to overhaul the system from cradle to grave—starting with the way elephants were recruited into the logging life. He hoped to create a school to gradually induct the young ones, already born into captivity, and even to establish a hospital to ensure better doctoring.
When he finished, there was silence. Harding poured himself another drink, paused, and then spoke. As long as Williams rationally made his case, and documented proof of his success, Harding said, “I’ll back you.” That was vital because there was sure to be a battle ahead. “You’re challenging accepted methods,” Harding said. “Some people won’t like that.” In fact, the boss figured, the campaign might make or break the young recruit. He’d better be prepared. The example of Bandoola went only so far. Williams had to demonstrate the success was repeatable. If he could do that, Harding said, then “the days of kheddaring will be numbered.”
Over the next months, Williams campaigned for his ideas, taking every opportunity to seek out opponents as well as supporters, and tell them, “If you saw Bandoola—he’s the only domesticated elephant we’ve got—Bandoola works smoothly. He uses his brain. He knows exactly what to do and when to do it. The kheddared elephants rush the job. They’re not skilled.”
The gentler concepts that Williams believed in, he said, “appeared to the senior men in Bombine as sentimental, unpractical, uneconomic.” He knew he wouldn’t change their minds until he could prove that his plan was financially beneficial.
So he worked out some figures. While baby elephants were being thrown away to die, the company was spending a fortune obtaining grown elephants. In a single decade, it would purchase nearly two thousand mature workers for Burma logging alone. And each one cost anywhere between $500 and $3,000, as much as $180,000 today. Meanwhile, what would it cost the company to keep the babies alive? Very little. The elephants primarily fed themselves, so the only expenditures would be from making up for the loss of output from mothers who would temporarily be given lighter workloads, and the pay for extra uzis as the calves grew. The price tag would still be less than it would be for buying kheddared animals. And these elephants would be healthier and more trustworthy. It was, he said, “at the same time practical and humanitarian.” As for creating an infirmary and improving veterinary care, making a case was easy—healthy animals produced more work than sick ones.
Williams had worked it all out on paper. Now it was time for Harding to go to bat for him.