BEATING FOR BEAR IN CHOTA NAGPUR 49 



see the animals in their present position, and we again 

 fired, and almost on the instant the cracker with a side 

 jump got between the bears. At its next explosion they 

 shot apart, and one of them went out of my vision. The 

 second rose on its hind legs, and in a second saw A. B.C. 

 immediately in front of him some fifteen paces or so away. 

 A. B.C. fired at the animal once without apparent effect, 

 and I was thinking that I would shoot the moment he had 

 put in his other barrel he could not miss, and no more 

 could I, the animal looked as big as a haystack, so close 

 was it when to my surprise and utter consternation A.B.C. 

 dropped the muzzle of his gun and commenced to shake 

 with great gusts of that preposterous laugh of his. The 

 bear was by then within five to seven yards of him. 

 Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! ... Hah ! Hah ! Hah ! he bellowed 

 in great rolling gusts of sound. The animal halted and 

 for a few seconds stood erect staring at A. B.C., then 

 dropping to its feet it turned round and bolted back into 

 the cavern. I was furiously angry. For some instants I 

 had thought A.B.C. a doomed man, for I did not dare fire. 

 And that the bear meant mischief and would kill A.B.C. 

 before my eyes appeared a certainty. Reaction came with 

 that wild laughter and the disappearance of the bear, and 

 in my turn I laughed till I was almost sick. To see that 

 maniac within a few yards of a bear up on its hind legs 

 and meaning mischief, to realize that he was a doomed 

 man, and then to hear that great bellowing laughter. It 

 was an inconceivable and altogether impossible situation ! 

 I did not think of it at the time. I was too anxious and 

 horror-struck. But after all I do not wonder the bear turned 

 tail. I think most of the natives believed A.B.C. to be a 

 bit of a deity plus devil combined. 



It transpired, after some considerable and heated question- 

 ing from the older members of the party, that A.B.C. had 

 never been bear shooting before (we were all so accustomed 

 to it that no one had ever asked him), and that the rough and 

 tumble of the bears and their separation by the cracker 

 had appealed irresistibly to his sense of the comic and it 

 was ludicrous enough it may be admitted. When the bear 

 got on to its hind legs and came for him it put the final 

 touch to the farce as A.B.C. saw it, and he just collapsed 

 and roared. " Couldn't hold the gun up, you know. Most 

 comic sight I ever saw in my life." " That b-b-bear . . 



