INDIAN SHOOTING 193 



I found him stone-dead under the overhanging ledge, but I 

 could hear something moving ahead of me the whole time ; the 

 cave was pitch dark, was getting much lower and narrower, and 

 turned two sharp corners. 



To get at the bear's head I should have to crawl over him, and 

 we had no rope long enough to reach to where I was, besides which 

 the cave made so many zigzags that it would in any case have been 

 impossible to haul the bear out without several of the party coming 

 down to assist ; so pulling out some hair to show that I had handled 

 him, I returned, and offered to go on ahead of the bear as a guard, 

 with rifle and lantern, if some of the others would bring the rope 

 and do the hauling. 



The noise ahead was probably made by cubs, but as I did not 

 know their size, and as it might have been a fourth bear, I did not 

 care to risk being attacked while I was tying up the quarry in a 

 place where I had no elbow-room. 



L., I think wisely, decided that we had been very lucky in re- 

 covering two bears and our lanterns without accident, and that it 

 would be folly to risk an almost certain mauling for the sake of a " 

 third ; so I came out, by no means unwillingly. I never fancied 

 the last part of the job I could not have got the bear out alone, 

 and as two or three men on hands and knees in a narrow cave 

 must get in each other's way in a scrimmage, a charge would 

 probably have ended badly. 



I only escaped the first time through putting the lantern on 

 one side of me instead of at my feet, and through the cave at that 

 place being wide enough for the bear to pass by my side ; very 

 likely also the fact of my standing on the stone, though it was at 

 the most two feet high, brought me a little above the level of the 

 bear's eyes, and seeing the lantern he charged it. 



The astonishing part of the whole thing was the rapidity with 

 which the bears came up the crevice. It was by no means an easy 

 climb for a man, and yet it hardly seemed to delay them at all. 



There is a certain delicacy in this branch of sport that 

 requires such exceptional temperament and nerve that the 

 writer can hardly feel himself justified in recommending its 

 practice, at all events to a novice in the art. 



The remaining varieties of the bear family found in India 

 are somewhat more rare than those already described. They 

 are the Burmese bear ( Ursus malayanus}, the Beluchistan bear 

 n. o 



