4 1 2 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport, 



steered their course ; but every Burman knows enough 

 of the stars to guide himself by them at night, and 

 these men made the coast in seven days, and scat- 

 tered. The schooner arrived four days after the 

 escape of the convicts. I sent her off, after procuring 

 sufficient water to last me for a week, to Rangoon, 

 and at the same time I wrote off to Calcutta for a 

 condensing machine. I reported what I had done to 

 0. , the chief engineer about the most sensible fellow 

 I ever served under, and who never wrote a letter or 

 gave the least trouble as long as he saw a man was 

 not only capable of doing his work but did it. The 

 amount was beyond my own sanctioning, but after 

 our late experience he agreed with me that it would 

 not do to trust to a boat to get water from the larger 

 island. Most of these escaped convicts were captured 

 and sent back to me. But three of the Shan and 

 Karen chiefs got away for a time, and two were never 

 accounted for. I believe they got back to their own 

 states. The man I particularly allude to was a 

 Karen. For his apprehension a reward of Es. 200 

 was offered, dead or alive. Sundry peelers had tried 

 to seize him, for he went about pretty openly, but he 

 had invariably proved too much for them, had cut 

 them down and escaped ; but for some reason or 

 another he would not leave that locality, though he 

 might have got back to Karennee easily. 



But one day two Christian Karens out hunting 

 with some twenty savage dogs came across him, and, 

 solicitous of gaining the reward, called upon him to 

 surrender. He laughed at them and retreated to a 

 bamboo clump, cut down a male reed, pointed one 

 end, and then holding his dalweel or fighting sword 



