Every window is guarded by "meat safe" blinds of wire gauze; the doors are,
normally, kept shut; and yet, after one has swept round like an irate
whirlwind with a grass slipper, and slain or desperately wounded every
visible fly in the cabin, and at last sat down again to pant and paint,
hoping for surcease from annoyance, not five minutes pass before one, two,
nay, a round dozen of the miscreants are gaily licking the moisture off
the cobalt (may they die in agony!), or trying to swim across the glass of
water, or playing hop-scotch on the nape of my neck.
From what mysterious lair or hidden orifice they come I know not, but here
they are in profusion until another massacre of the innocents is decreed.
It is a sound thing to go round one's sleeping-cabin at night before
"turning in," and make a bag of all that can be found "dreaming the happy
hours away" on the bulkheads and ceiling. It sends us to bed in the
virtuous frame of mind of the Village Blacksmith--
"Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose"
There are other microbes besides flies in Kashmir which are
exasperating--coolies, for instance.
I had engaged men through Chattar Singh (the State Transport factotum at
Srinagar) to take us up the river, and decreed that we should start at
4 A.M. yesterday.
We had been to an _al fresco_ gathering at the Residency the night before,
and so were rather sleepy in the early morning, and I did not wake at four
o'clock.
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