70 AN UNPROVOKED ATTACK. 



for getting him conveyed home, we renewed our search for 

 the leopard. Although we beat about until evening, all our 

 endeavours to find it were fruitless, nor was it again heard of 

 in the vicinity. The hero of this hunt was not long in re- 

 covering from his wounds, of which, if he be still living, he 

 bears the scars on his face and arm to this day. With his 

 usual erratic disposition, he soon gave up tea-planting, and 

 wandered away elsewhere in search of adventure and wild 

 sport. The last time I met the " Bhagee," by which sobriquet 

 he was well known, he was with an expedition against the 

 hill-tribes on the north-west frontier, where, as an amateur, 

 he had been " shooting plumb centre," as he termed it, at the 

 enemy with his six-shooter. The injuries to the poor woman 

 were, fortunately, more ugly than dangerous. 



This has truly been a chapter of unsuccessful performances. 

 But as I am writing simple facts, they must be taken as they 

 actually occurred. Indeed, in making these extracts from my 

 old shooting-journal, kept regularly for upwards of thirty 

 years, I have endeavoured to select such incidents as may 

 tend to depict shady as well as sunny sketches of Himalayan 

 hunting in their true lights. And although it is certainly 

 more satisfactory to bag one's game, wild sport is, perhaps, 

 none the less exciting to its true votaries because it does not 

 always end in a kill. 



