'''For Richer for Poorer'' 29 



light of our boat played on a group of chital, and I was 

 being paddled up under the beam of light with the idea 

 of shooting one. The skiff liit a submerged stump, and 

 bounced the stock of the heavy gun off the thwart. As it 

 dropped, the hammers caught. The weight of the gun 

 sprung them enough to fire both barrels. 



The great lead slugs passed through my hands as they 

 slid off the barrel of the gun, burning my palms badly, and 

 cut the brim of my pith helmet, curiously enough, without 

 knocking it off. My face was filled with black powder 

 grains. I sat down, considerably shaken, and went back to 

 the boat, where my wife and the captain helped me aboard. 

 The gun, was badly damaged, so there was nothing to do 

 but return to Calcutta, which we did at once, and there 

 Major Camalliri, surgeon of the Coldstream Guards, picked 

 the powder grains out of my face. A few days' rest set 

 everything to rights. In my usual hypochondriacal way, I 

 wasted a lot of mental energy awaiting tetanus, but in due 

 time there was too much else to think about and this non- 

 sense got pushed out of mind. 



While Rosamond and I were resting at Darjeeling, after 

 I had pretty nearly blown my head off in the Sunderbunds, 

 we met an interesting character, a Mr. Mueller, He col- 

 lected all sorts of objects, from Tibetan bronzes to butter- 

 flies, and was in touch, by correspondence, with museum 

 directors everywhere. He had for sale some of the ma- 

 terial picked up by members of the Younghusband expe- 

 dition to Lhasa, and Rosamond proceeded to get a few 

 mementos of our visit. 



He remarked casually to me that this was the season of 



