An elderly
lady, with a dirty red cap and very untidy ringlets, superintended the
business with much clamour. We take her to be the wife or grandmother (not
sure which) of the skipper.
It was with an undoubted sense of solid comfort that we lay in our cosy
beds under a wooden roof, whereon the fat rain-drops sputtered, while the
thunder still crackled and banged in the distance!
We shifted before dawn to a small village a couple of miles to the east,
and at 6.30 Jane and I set out to attack the bara singh, of which the
shikari held out high hope. My wife, mounted on a rough pony, was able to
accomplish with great comfort the two miles of flat country which we had
to traverse before turning off sharp to the right along a track which led
steeply upwards through the scrub that clothed the lower part of the
nullah.
There is something unusually charming in the dawn here--the crisp, buoyant
air, the silent hills, their lower slopes and corries still a purple
mystery; on high, the silver peaks--looking ridiculously close--change
swiftly from their cold pallor into rosy life at the first touch of the
risen sun.
The first part of our day's work was easy enough. The sun was still hidden
from us behind the mountain flange on our left; the snow patches on the
sky-line ahead seemed comparatively near, and the diabolical swiftness of
the shikari's stealthy walk was yet to be fully realised.
Up and up we went, first through a thick scrub or jungle of a highly
prickly description, over a few small streams, then out upon a grassy
ridge, up which we slowly panted.
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