My vexation and disgust may be imagined when
I found the noble beast to be a miserable 8-pointer, which I would never
have fired at if I could have seen its head properly. Heartily consigning
the shikari, together with the mendacious villager and all his kind, to a
hot place, I dolefully stumbled away downhill again in the gathering dark,
and finally deposited my weary and dejected self on board the boat, after
fourteen hours of the hardest walking I have ever done.
There is a confused tale prevalent that the bear, taking a mean advantage
of my absence, has been down to the village and eaten a few ponies, or
frightened them--I can't make out which.
CHAPTER VII
BACK TO SRINAGAR
Easter Day, _April_ 23.--We left the Erin district early in the morning
following the bara singh fiasco, and punted and poled up the river to join
the Smithsons in a last attack upon the duck. We found the bold Colonel,
"Rough with slaughter and red with fight,"
enjoying himself hugely among the jheels, and we prepared to join in the
fray; but our _chasse_ was put an end to by the discovery that the 14th,
and not the 15th, was the last legal day for shooting. So we packed away
our guns and towed up to Srinagar, which we reached on Sunday afternoon.
Our brief experience of camping and "shikar" had proved to my wife that
she was not cast in the heroic mould of a female Nimrod. Not being a shot
herself--as Charlotte is--she saw that, as far as she was concerned, a
shooting expedition with the Smithsons would entail a great deal of
solitary rumination in camp, while the rest of the party pursued the red
bear to his den, or chased the nimble markhor up and down the precipices.
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