ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 85 



CHAPTER VIII 



Fighting bears — The hat-trick — Encounters with panthers — Hog deer and 

 leopard-cat kitten. 



My ayah, Logan-ham, was with me in many an expedition ; 

 she was always confident that where the Doray was there 

 was safety, not merely from wild beasts, but from the 

 ' evil eye,' as potent a bit of witchcraft in Eastern as it is 

 in Western lands. The jungles and their denizens had no 

 more terrors for her than for me, and she would not have 

 been scared away, as was that faint-hearted creature of 

 earlier days, when the bear came to investigate our camp ; 

 still, neither of us was altogether proof against alarm, and 

 we could run on occasion. Once, indeed, we could hardly 

 do even that for sheer terror. We were strolling about, 

 never far from camp, when such awful sounds issued from a 

 wood, waking the echoes there, as made us look at each 

 other dumb with fright. Whither to run we knew not, for 

 the noise seemed all around, and neither could we climb 

 to any purpose ; yet, though we felt it was quite impossible 

 to stop where we were, our feet seemed turned to lead, and 

 she, poor thing ! fell down. I was very rough, dragging, 

 and, as I remember, kicking her, for her own good, to force 

 her to move. However, we did manage to reach the camp, 

 and on my describing to F. the general awfulness of the 

 sounds he said that he too had heard them, and that they 

 were made by bears fighting in the depths of the wood, 

 very much too busy to think of aught else, so that we had 

 not been in any danger. 



Once again the same sort of snarling yells startled us, 



