40 INDIAN BIG GAME 



Bheliah, both of them Men — staunch, rehable 

 tiger shikaris whose equal I have not seen. Ram 

 Huruk was a silent man of the wilds, a desper- 

 ately hard worker. Iseri Singh was a delicate 

 man of refined and civilized type ; highly strung, 

 and always overworking himself, nerve and 

 muscle, to the last degree. When beating for 

 tiger it was his wont to be dressed in spotless 

 white and to carry a little bamboo switch. This 

 picture of him I carry now in my mind as he 

 would arrive at the end of a beat, successful or 

 not, handling his men with always the same half- 

 humorous, half-acid smile on his lean keen face. 



Our knowledge of the country was only gained 

 as we went along. B. had sent out a recon- 

 noitring party for me beforehand, but of the two 

 shikaris who started, one died and the other came 

 in delirious with fever and could tell nothing. B. 

 himself had shot further in the interior, but we 

 never reached so far. And indeed his notes 

 would have been of little use, for he went in the 

 cold weather when conditions and the localities 

 of tiger are entirely different ; for then the tiger 

 leave the big jungles and inhabit patches on the 

 plains, and are consequently easier to obtain than 

 in the heat. 



I left railhead on the 1st of April 1921, after 

 the Kadir Cup, taking with me an Indian bone- 

 setter, a masseur who made the nerves and muscles 

 of my broken arm twang like fiddle-strings when 

 he massaged me three times daily, completing the 

 Meerut treatment. 



At first it seemed that the services of a steady 

 shrewd youth would be advisable, and that he 



