MISTAKING HIS FRIEND FOR A BEAR 



It was a terrible disaster, and yet he could hardly be 

 held to blame, for it appears that the woman had been 

 stooping down gathering sticks, and in this attitude with 

 the rough, black kumle or blanket over her shoulders, 

 resembled no object more closely than a bear. 



He was naturally much distressed, and eventually recom- 

 pensed her relatives handsomely for the bereavement he 

 had so unwillingly caused them, so that in the end she 

 proved more profitable dead than alive. " However, the 

 matter eventually got into the native papers, which 

 violently demanded that " the murderer " should be 

 sentenced to death and that his execution should take place 

 on the scene of the tragedy ! 



While on the subject of accidents in connection with 

 bear shooting, I may mention another one I heard of later, 

 which ought to have ended as fatally, but fortunately did 

 not. Two district officials out after a bear, were posted 

 on trees at some distance from each other. As the beaters 

 approached, the senior of the two sportsmen, who was very 

 short-sighted, and moreover rather deaf, saw something 

 black moving in the jungle at some little distance from his 

 post, and thinking it was the bear, promptly fired at it, 

 evoking a response from the object which to his imperfect 

 hearing seemed to be the cry of an animal in pain. 



" What, not dead yet ? " he exclaimed, and under the 

 impression he had only wounded the beast whereas he 

 had missed it altogether he fired the second barrel, and 

 unfortunately with better success, for this time the response 

 was louder, and in a voice which he now recognized as 

 unmistakably human. 



He now realized what had happened, and horrified at 

 the thought that he had perhaps killed, or at anj rate 

 wounded, some native living in the neighbourhood, he 

 clambered down the tree and ran up to the spot where he 

 had fallen. 



Here he found, not a native as he had imagined, but 

 his own companion, lying on the ground, almost un- 

 conscious and bleeding profusely from a bullet wound in 

 the shoulders, but mercifully too high up to be likely to 

 prove serious. 



He bandaged the wound up tightly with his kummerbund, 



63 



