Sporting Trips of a Subaltern 



ground faster than I can without exposing myself, 

 also the clouds are now rising from below, so 

 that a further stalk will be impossible. Now or 

 never, and I sit down and aim for the biggest 

 I can see. A moving thar at three hundred yards 

 or more is quite beyond me, and no answering 

 "phut" comes after my shot; a second after, 

 thar seem to swarm all round the ravine, some 

 jumping up from under rocks, closer to me than 

 the one I fired at, all going like the wind, and, in 

 far less time than it takes to relate, Hira Singh, 

 the tiffin coolie, and a despairing sahib have the 

 ravine to themselves. To add to my woes the 

 sun now goes out suddenly and it gets gloomy 

 and very cold, a heavy thunderstorm comes on, 

 and remembering a big boulder some way back, 

 under the lea of which I hope for shelter, we 

 retrace our steps. We reach it in a terrific 

 hailstorm, drenched to the skin. For two hours 

 the hail continues with an icy wind. In the 

 height of the storm a thar took cover under a rock 

 some hundred and fifty yards below me. I had 

 to crawl out and take my shot with the hail in 

 my face and paralyzed with cold ; needless to say, 

 the thar moved on. Finally, after a long consulta- 

 tion with the tiffin coolie, Hira Singh announces 

 that it is quite impossible to get down to camp 

 to-day. It certainly appeared so, the hillside that 

 we had climbed with difficulty was now a sheet 



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