XV 



FAILURES 



I WENT again a year or two later to shoot in 

 the Central Provinces, or to try to shoot I 

 should say, as everything I did went wrong 

 and there was nothing but disappointments and 

 disasters, though I saw some tigers; in fact, things 

 went so badly for me that I wrote some sad verses 

 on grief and disaster which I set to (banjo) music, 

 in a very minor key and sang Adagio, molto lamen- 

 toso, con-all-the-expression-I-could-put-into-it when 

 feeling at my lowest. 



The ship going out to Bombay was terribly 

 crowded, but that of course was the same misfortune 

 for everybody. There were nearly five hundred 

 children, and parents to match, and there was no 

 room to sit on deck with any comfort. Being so 

 crowded together should have kept us warm, but 

 it was very cold the early part of the voyage. 



On landing in Bombay neither of my servants 

 was there to meet me as they had promised : Govind 

 was too ill to come at all and Jiwan, the old cook, 

 only met me a week later. I went to my agents 

 to ask for my letters which were to tell me where I 

 was to go and shoot, but by some mistake they had 

 all been forwarded to England. After many quips 



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