Introduction 



roll (which thus assumes mammoth proportions), 

 and so on. But, ye gods, when it is a shikar ex- 

 pedition ! It is then that your servants appear 

 in their full glory, their devilish ingenuity is 

 exercised up to the hilt, and it requires the ex- 

 perienced eye of the Anglo-Indian shikari to make 

 out the uses of even a tithe of what the carriage is 

 now disgorging on to the platform before the eyes 

 of that astonished railway official, who seems to 

 remember that there is a rule somewhere about 

 weighing luggage. If there be, it is quite dis- 

 regarded by our young shikaring subalterns, who 

 stroll up serenely to see how it goes with the rest 

 of the kit. Two rolls of khaki cloth (how lovingly 

 they look at them !) are their little tents, the happy 

 home of the happy, happy past six weeks. A couple 

 of green rolls consist of a canvas tub, chair, basin, 

 and table. A gunny bag fastened at an end con- 

 tains the low fold-up bedstead. Tent poles, tied 

 with a bit of jungle fibre cut from the nearest scrub 

 when the poles were last and finally bound together, 

 are pitched out. Then follow the weirdest collection 

 of paraphernalia : servants' bedding and brass 

 lotahs, cooking-pots, kerosine-tins for the sahib's 

 hot bath water, baskets containing a variety 

 collection of odds and ends ; two wretched murghis 

 in a small wicker cage with legs tied together, but 

 who with admirable presence of mind as soon as 

 they reach the platform with a bump push out their 

 heads and commence to search for stray grains of 



XVI 



