BLAZING DEER HARD WORK 185 



bamboo with a small handrail attached; not an easy task at any 

 time, and very unpleasant on a pitchy dark night. We then 

 turned inland, and stumbling about over most uneven ground 

 for another mile, I was told that we had arrived at our hunting- 

 ground. One of the men put a broken chatty (earthenware 

 pot) in a framework on his head, fastened it under his chin, 

 and set some rags well impregnated with earth-oil alight. As 

 soon as the fire blazed up, he with a man on either side ring- 

 ing bells started off at a fast jog-trot in zigzags, and a man 

 armed with a dah and I followed in the rear. The country 

 was a mass of holes and ant-hills covered with short grass 

 and jungle. They were quite invisible, for the light from the 

 pot was thrown ahead, whilst all in the rear was impenetrable 

 darkness. I should be sorry to say the number of falls I had, 

 but unaccustomed to the work, and unused to such exertions 

 on foot, I could scarcely keep up with the men, who never 

 slackened their pace. Presently they redoubled the noise with 

 the bells, their zigzag pace became faster, and the man 

 whispered to me to get up closer. Out of the darkness I saw 

 two eyeballs glaring at me, and as we got nearer I distinguished 

 a dark object which I took to be the body of a sambur. I fired 

 into it at a distance of 10 or 12 feet, and on receiving the 

 ball the poor brute bounded forward, upset one of the bell- 

 ringers, and disappeared. As the beat was for me, I was 

 allowed to shoot, but, as a rule, the man with the dah crawls 

 behind and hamstrings the beast. If in these night-beats the 

 men come across a tiger, they squat down together and ex- 

 tinguish the light, and the tiger slinks away ; they then continue 

 their sport and generally make a fair bag. We continued our 

 eternal jog-trot, and in about half-an-hour came upon another 

 sambur. I fired at it, but it, too, got away. By that time I 

 had had enough, so leaving the three to go on, I, with the 

 fourth, walked back to the Zyat where I was stopping, getting 

 there at 2 a.m. thoroughly tired out. The Burmese hamstrung 

 another sambur after I left, and the next day the two I had 

 fired at were found dead a stag with a fair head of horns 

 and a doe. 



One day a Karen brought in the head of a two-horned 



