AFTER BLUE BULL. 255 



we took the elephants to beat through them. We 

 saw a few neilghai (blue bull), one of which Colonel 

 Fraser shot. And then we beat a grass cover of small 

 extent, but extremely thick, situated in the midst of an 

 open plain. We only expected to find black partridge, 

 but, to our surprise, a large panther got up in front of 

 Colonel Fraser's elephant. He only got a glimpse of the 

 beast through the high grass, but the patch of jungle was 

 so small that we felt certain of eventually shooting it. 

 However, although eighteen elephants beat carefully 

 through and through some ten times, the panther was 

 never seen again. Where he got to was a mystery. The 

 surrounding plain was alive with horsemen and beaters, 

 who must have seen the panther if he had slipped away. 



After breakfast the men went out to try for a wild boar. 

 There are many of them in the jungles, but they found it 

 impossible to drive them on to ridable ground. However 

 they got two capital gallops after neilghai. One big blue 

 bull was found in some dhal fields, fully five miles away 

 from the thick cover. At first he kept ahead easily, but 

 after about four miles at racing speed, condition began to 

 tell, and the bull came back to them. Alan and Yar 

 Singh were close to him, and riding against each other for 

 first spear. 



Suddenly they came to a small clump of thick bushes, 

 into which the bull darted and lay down. It took three or 



