382 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



of the master bull. The tracks of the herd lead a broad 

 path away from the river towards the distant open grassy 

 and sapling-studded country, where these pachyderms love 

 to lie during the hot hours of the day ; but the big fellow 

 has made off elsewhere. Twice has he skirted the sandy 

 shore and once entered a secluded back-water, where he 

 rolled in the muddy sand. Here it was that the rain fell 

 during the small hours of the morning, when he climbed 

 the steep bank, and passed round that huge fallen tree, 

 making inland. 



The woods are waking now. A sudden commotion high 

 above our heads, and a little shower of raindrops ; red 

 Malabar squirrels on the limb of a forest giant, rousing to 

 their daily play up mighty trunks. Those four melodious 

 cuckoo notes whistled now, long after, and in a far distant 

 land they instantly bring us back to that enchanted 

 forest echo through the vistas of tall, straight stems 

 before us. Gradually we pass on. Glade land opens out, 

 long grass receives us, still slowly pacing forward, eyes 

 on ground, and a glance far on ahead. Again the tall- 

 stemmed forest covers us. That bull is making for some 

 distant ground ! The sal forest thins again, and the 

 ground becomes stony. Our little Mariah trackers evince 

 greater caution, taking up the trail from the sahib, whose 

 half-educated eye has lost the to them simple guiding 

 marks. It is a little rising ground before us. Gently up 

 to the top now, and put your head quietly round the trunk 

 of that tree, rifle in hand. What ! Not there ? This little 

 shallow depression among the knolls is well known to the 

 Mariahs as a favourite lair of this very bull. But to-day 

 we must pass on : he has only tarried here in seeming 

 hesitation. 



In such manner the shikari 'may encompass many a weary 

 mile, during almost every pace of which all his senses 

 have to be on the stretch. Bubahis is capricious. To-day 

 he may be making for a distant spot, or, suddenly tempted 



