MELURSUS "DIABOLICUS" ill 



The Jdt, Mulloo, was meanwhile regaling the party with 

 a vivid description of the catastrophe, and his solemn 

 round eyes and broad-mouthing speech so tickled me, 

 as he explained, with very illustrative gestures, how I had 

 fallen forwards, and, fixing my hands in its shaggy coat, 

 mounted that howling, horrified bear, before, accompanied 

 by our satellites the hat, rifle, and little bear, we had gone 

 revolving down, that I leant back and roared with a laughter 

 that went a long way in allaying the fears of the faithful 

 fellows attending me. 



The only now practicable way off the hill was/<w/ the 

 cave again, and down a rough mass of boulders, and suffi- 

 ciently arduous it was indeed. Meanwhile the shikari, 

 who had gone down to pick up the pieces of my rifle, 

 brought up the carcase of the bear cub, with my bullet-hole 

 in its forehead. The little brute, clinging to its mother's 

 shaggy shoulders, had intercepted or at least set up the 

 bullet considerably. Whether the she-bear got any of it 

 is not known. She went slowly off round a spur of the 

 hill, halting twice en route, say the men. 



Camp, six miles off, was reached at last on a stretcher 

 made of two poles and a pagri. Here to my concern it 

 was found that most of the perchloride of mercury mixture 

 I had brought with me had leaked from the glass-stoppered 

 bottle ; but a little was left, and, making up the solution, 

 I washed and syringed out the wounds, now for the first 

 time feeling faint from pain. 



A blazing day of roaring hot winds, spent under the 

 little mango trees at Sataldehi, was succeeded by a calm 

 cool night, and I was carried ten miles farther. By this 

 time my back had stiffened from my fall of the morning, 

 and it was impossible to obtain rest for a moment, nor 

 could I, though incessantly sitting up and lying down 

 again, draw breath without pain. To ease the back I tried 

 to turn on my side ; but at that such a cramp seized the 

 lacerated muscles of the thigh that the horrified bearers of 



