ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 25 



are thick cotton rugs, made in all manner of bright colours, 

 wearing and washing as not many English fabrics would. 



But my poor ayah ! She had not reckoned on everything 

 that befell us that night, and the first was her last in those 

 wilds ; for when all was quiet, and our people, our animals, 

 and we ourselves settled to sleep, I heard a curious, un- 

 familiar sound, as of something snuffing round the tent 

 sides. At first I fancied it might be the ayah snoring, rolled 

 up in her muffling blankets ; but no, it was deeper-chested 

 than that ! 



I whispered to rouse F., who, however, needed no one 

 to do that for him, his attention being always on the qui 

 vive — on a hair-trigger, as one might express it — in his 

 beloved jungles, where it truly is the unexpected that mostly 

 happens. 



He got up quietly, lifted the tent-fly, and went out into 

 the night ' to frighten something away,' he said, when he 

 came back again. It turned out to be a bear inquisitively 

 poking his nose under the tent without having any designs 

 on us — wondering only as to what he had come upon, and 

 quite content to take himself off unharmed. 



I can truly say that, though excited and greatly interested, 

 I was not one whit afraid. But my ayah ! Nothing could 

 induce her to stay another day, let alone a night, in these, 

 to her, awful jungles ; so we had to arrange for her to be 

 conveyed back to civilisation, and I made shift without her. 

 Her description of the dangers and terrors which service 

 with this D&ray and Dursani led people into must have gone 

 the round of the ayah sisterhood, for though we tried, by 

 holding out tempting promises of double pay, none could 

 be persuaded to come to me. However, had one been so 

 procured, the same poor-spiritedness would quite likely have 

 caused her to be more of a clog on our travelling than we 

 liked, so it was just as well as it was. 



The day after the ayah's departure one of the peons fell 



