THE BIOGRAPHY OF A TIGER 7 



window a distant range of hills, which, first viewed late on 

 the previous evening, are still seen to continue parallel 

 with our course, and some forty miles to the northward. 



At the chilly hour of three in the morning we find 

 ourselves standing on the platform of a small and very 

 sleepy wayside station. Our train, after a leisurely halt 

 apparently made for the purpose of permitting the guard 

 and other officials to indulge in a drink and chat with 

 their local acquaintances wakes up, and puffs slowly off, 

 leaving us shivering and listening to the far-off howling 

 of jackals and the sleepy shunting of goods trucks by a 

 somnolent engine, until an appropriately mournful coolie 

 has been prevailed on to transport our baggage, with 

 paralysing deliberation, to the post-cart that waits in the 

 dusty road outside. 



After another long wait, the tedium of which we en- 

 deavour to beguile with a cheroot, the mail-bags at last 

 appear, and are loaded up in the same hopelessly soporific 

 manner. The drooping ponies are revived with vigorous 

 prods, and the post-cart begins to pick its way through the 

 corpse-like forms of slumbering native passengers strewn 

 in the dust of the station yard, jolts through a hushed and 

 walled native town, and settles down to a steady swing, 

 under the moon, along an apparently interminable, straight, 

 acacia-lined, country road. 



We have been asleep some time, when a ghastly blare 

 from our Jehu's cracked bugle startles us suddenly from 

 our aching slumber, and announces the approach of a 

 changing- station. Our pair of undersized "tattoos" is 

 forthwith cast adrift one to roll luxuriously in the road- 

 side dust, the other to pick a squealing, biting, heel-waged 

 quarrel with a roadside acquaintance. Then a fresh and 

 most unwilling pair of ponies is backed and pushed into 

 the rotten string-mended harness, whacked into a sem- 

 blance of unanimity, and off we rattle again. 



Dawn at length begins to show faint and far over the 



