148 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



who were better used to a temperature of ninety degrees 

 in the shade, fires had to be kept up for quite six months 

 every year, let alone this exceptional one. 



One morning, not far from the bungalow, F. came upon 

 a panther, on his very path, all but dead from starvation, 

 and killed it in sheer pity for its wasted condition. Our 

 people brought in two, and a fourth they found more dead 

 than alive, famished and spiritless with misery ; all four 

 in the space of a week ! 



There was much unreclaimed forest and scrub in the 

 neighbourhood, and the wild things that inhabited it 

 suffered frightfully from the continuous cold and wet, which 

 seemed to alter all the accustomed conditions of their lives, 

 and it was at this time that we got up one morning to find 

 that we had unawares entertained as a guest during the night 

 a panther, who had adventured his precious but most 

 miserable self under our roof — anything for shelter — curling 

 himself up on a sofa in the verandah ! 



This verandah was a closed-in one, with windows round 

 three sides, and a very rough door, never shutting properly, 

 which, being made of unseasoned planks, shrank in the dry 

 and swelled in the wet weather, in this matching the rest 

 of this special habitation, so that we looked for nothing 

 better, nor sought to remedy it. Hence the distressed 

 creature, finding no hindrance, crept in, enticed by the 

 warmth, and perhaps the chance of a bite of food — em- 

 boldened or, it may be, tamed by stress of misery. 



When the dogs were let out they tore about the place like 

 mad things, baying and whining in deafening chorus, and 

 would have dragged the sofa to pieces, only we shut them 

 out of the verandah as we wanted to look round first. 



The dried muddy pugs were quite distinctly recognisable 

 for those of a full-grown panther ; the sofa rug and a 

 flannel coat of F.'s were damp where they had been lain on, 

 and were covered, too, with a quantity of jet-black hairs, 



