The very familiar note
of the cuckoo, somewhere up in the jungle, reminds me of an English spring.
4 P.M.--I knew it! I knew that if the wind held down the nullah I should
be dragged up that horrible ridge opposite. Hardly had I written the above
when I was hunted from my lair, and rushed down 200 steep feet, and then
up some 500 or 600 on the other side of the stream, through an abattis of
clinging undergrowth that made a severe toil of what could never have been
a pleasure. There can be no doubt but that a pith helmet--a really shady,
broad one--is a most infernal machine under which to force one's way
through brushwood.
Well, all things come to an end--wind first, temper next, and finally the
journey.
My shikari is a fiend in human shape. He slinks along on the flat at what
_looks_ like a mild three-miles-an-hour constitutional, but unless you are
a _real_ four-mile man you will be left hopelessly astern; but when he
gets upon his favourite "one in one" slope, then does he simply sail away,
with the tiffin coolie carrying a fat basket and all your spare lumber in
his wake, while you toil upward and ever upwards--gasping--until with your
last available breath you murmur "Asti," and sink upon the nearest stone a
limp, perspiring worm!
5.30 P.M.--That bear has taken a sleeping draught!
I am now perched on a lonely rock, my hard taskmaster having routed me out
of a very comfortable place under a blue pine, whose discarded needles
afforded me a really agreeable resting-place, and dragged me away down
again through the pine forest and jungle; hurried me across a roaring
torrent on a fallen tree trunk; personally conducted me hastily up a place
like the roof of a house; and finally, explaining that the bear, when
disturbed, must inevitably come close past me, has departed with his staff
(the chota shikari, the tiffin coolie, and a baboon-faced native) to wake
up the bear and send him along.
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