204 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



path which led to the low country, in pleasant leafy shade 

 all the way. The men had food with them, and the horses 

 carried their own provender slung over the saddles, while 

 for us there was a tiffin basket crammed full of provisions. 

 It was a leisurely day-long picnic all through ; we met no 

 one, nor anything of special note, and sorry we were to leave 

 the dim green dells for the unwelcome blinding glare with- 

 out ; yet that, too, had its compensation in the flocks of 

 wondrous butterflies, flitting, poising, hovering by hundreds 

 everywhere in the sunshine — their very life. Living gems 

 they were of amethyst and emerald, nothing less, looking 

 well-nigh transparent some of them from the talc-like spots 

 in their wings (like those of the silk-moths) ; and these were 

 fringed at the edge, by way of an added touch of fantastic 

 beauty. It was always the same in this neighbourhood, 

 but I never beheld so many together anywhere else, nor of 

 such rainbow hues. 



Not being far from the Travellers' Bungalow we decided 

 to push on to it after an hour's halt, and were just setting 

 out to finish up a pleasant but uneventful day when a number 

 of villagers came running up to us, calling out in evident 

 distress, some bitterly weeping, and their faces blanched 

 with horror. One of their people had that very day been 

 carried off by a tiger ; such was the story they had to tell. 

 Four men had started up the Ghat at daybreak, taking the 

 same path — there being but the one — that we had followed 

 in the opposite direction ; three only had returned, all idea 

 of pursuing their journey or its business knocked out of 

 their heads by the horrifying catastrophe. F. had a talk 

 with these three, who told him exactly what had happened, 

 as far as they could speak coherently, half-dead and dazed 

 with fright as they were, and no wonder ! They could only 

 say that one of them, the last man in the line of four climbing 

 the path, had been seized and dragged away into the depths 

 of the forest, a thick and impenetrable jungle, where none 



