89 A COLLECTING TRIP 
times the whine or snarl of a tiger. He must have 
killed elsewhere, for he did not bother to come out 
and take one of the goats, though he came very near 
by, and frightened the goats considerably. In the 
early morning we saw some deer, but did not shoot 
them, and went back to the boat. 
Later in the day I went off collecting, but took 
my rifle with me. I was in a small, ight draft skiff 
ealled a panchi. We were going up a narrow creek 
and came to a place where it was evident that some- 
thing had just crossed the stream. We could see the 
muddy water freshly stirred up. I stood up on the 
bottom of the boat, resting the butt of the gun on a 
thwart, just ahead of me. It was my double barrelled 
express rifle, and was not cocked. I was looking off 
over the bank which was just about level with my 
face, to try and see what had been stirring, when the 
boat slewed and hit a sunken stump that I did not 
see. The jar made me lost my balance a bit, and the 
butt of the gun slipped from the thwart, but scraped 
so as to spring both hammers. One was broken off. 
My hands had slipped up the barrel, for the rifle was 
a very heavy one, and the two bullets came right out 
between the palms of my hands and went up and cut 
through the front edge of my thick sun helmet. I 
could not believe, for a minute, that both my head 
and hands were not blown off, but no particular harm 
was done, beyond filling my hands and face full of 
powder grains and burning the palm of one hand 
pretty badly. I had this attended to after we got 
back to Caleutta, and no harm has resulted. If any- 
thing more serious had happened, we would have been 
in a fix, since the place where the accident occurred 
