108 ARRIVAL OF A HERD. 



enclosure D during the night, and after feeding about returned to the herd, 

 which was three miles distant. From this time till the 9th of June small 

 parties visited the cover occasionally, but always returned to the head- 

 quarters of the herd. This was very tantalising. We were kept constantly 

 on the stretch ; and each morning, until the trackers returned to camp, the 

 villagers of Morlay who were to help were detained at home so as to be 

 mustered at a moment's notice if required, whilst a man was stationed on the 

 wall of the Hurdenhully fort to fire a small cannon I had mounted there, as 

 a signal to other villagers to collect at Morlay in case we wanted more men. 

 Tools for digging the trenches at B and C, baskets for carrying earth, ropes 

 for securing the barricades, and provisions and cooking-pots for the multi- 

 tude, were stored in the temple buildings. Special services were held daily 

 by the Poojaree and trackers at that celebrated shrine, and the promises of 

 gifts held out to Koombappah for success were sufficient to have moved 

 the heart of even as stony a deity as himself. 



On the 9th of June I was at a hill some six miles west of Morlay look- 

 ino- after a bear. The trackers had brought in their usual morning report 

 before I left my bungalow, to the effect that the elephants were still at the 

 foot of the hills, five miles from cover D ; so, not expecting them to make a 

 move during the day, I had sent the trackers back to their duty of surveil- 

 lance, and with a number of men from Oomchwaddy was busy in the pursuit 

 of the said bear, a female with a cub. It was afternoon, and I was seated on 

 the top of the rocky hill, which rose some five hundred feet from the plain, 

 amused by the chase of the bear by my men along the hillside below. The 

 bear had broken wide of me when she was roused from a thicket, and I had 

 not had a shot ; but being encumbered by her cub, which was riding on its 

 mother's shoulders after the manner of young bears, the old female could not 

 <>et alone so fast as to keep much ahead of my men, who terrified mother 

 and cub so much by their hot pursuit that the cub fell off; and before it 

 could follow its mother — being very young — a blanket was thrown over it 

 and it was secured, whilst its mother held on for a cave close at hand, into 

 which she fled. 



This scene was enacting when I heard the distant boom of my old can- 

 non on the fort-wall of Hurdenhully. I waited to hear it repeated. Yes, 

 another shot ! No mistake this time. There goes the third ! Hurrah ! 

 That is the signal that the elephants are on our side of the river ! The 

 smoke of a fire lighted on the highest ground near Morlay — the sign that I 

 was reqiured at camp — now attracted my attention and that of the men with 

 me, so down the hill we went pell-mell, thinking no more of the bear ; and 

 making the men fall in, I mounted my elephant and we started for Morlay. 



