MY FIRST TIGER. 19 



yards away. Turning my head, I whispered to the 

 shikari that, as I had often told him before, I would 

 not shoot except at a stag. The deer moved quietly 

 out of sight. Five minutes afterwards I heard a rush 

 through the jungle. They had caught our wind and 

 were gone. 



The beat ended without any other incident, and 

 not another deer did I see that morning, though one 

 of the beaters showed me where a sahib had recently 

 shot a stag. 



So the day wore on, the beaters got slack, and 

 nothing appeared. I always found that my beaters 

 knocked up before I did. Considering they were " to 

 the manner born," or rather, to the Indian sun, the 

 extra walking that they had should not have produced 

 this result. As a matter of fact, the Indian sun never, 

 at the time at any rate, had any bad effect upon me. 

 Even in May I could walk and shoot all day. In fact, 

 I may say that the only disagreeable result of the 

 Indian climate on me was that, in spite of incessant 

 exercise at polo and every kind of sport, I continued 

 to put on flesh at an alarming rate. 



Seeing the beaters were beginning to straggle and 

 keep bad line, I called a halt ; and, sending the 

 shikari to go with them and keep them in line, with 

 strict orders to pick out bad beaters for reduced pay, I 

 took a lad from amongst them to carry my second rifle. 

 So we kept on for another hour, when I began to get 

 sick of it. My cold tea was all finished, and the sun had 

 long since passed the meridian. At last I despatched my 

 gun-bearer to the dawk bungalow to order my servant 



c 2 



