Sporting Trips of a Subaltern 



myself again to the task of getting home. Our 

 progress was slow in the extreme, but luckily 

 nothing in our watercourse barred our way com- 

 pletely, and just before dark we reached camp. 

 This was the first occasion on which I broke into 

 our small store of emergency whisky, and Hira 

 Singh and the tiffin coolie had their share. 



The next day provided an almost more un- 

 comfortable experience ; we took much the same 

 direction again, leaving instructions for camp to 

 be removed over to a fresh ravine. No sooner 

 had we reached our point of vantage than we 

 spotted five herds of thar; the whole hillside 

 seemed alive with them, one herd, containing 

 some very black-looking fellows, seemed fairly 

 approachable. By diving down and up a very 

 steep ravine, I could get unseen to a spur just 

 beyond which they were grazing. This meant 

 losing sight of them for some time, so I left the 

 tiffin coolie watching them, with instructions to 

 signal to me which way they had gone, should 

 they move in the interval. At the bottom of 

 the ravine I left Hira Singh, and with the utmost 

 caution climbed up without dislodging a stone. 

 All this took about an hour, and meanwhile the 

 clouds rolled up again, so that by the time I 

 crept over the last ridge I could hardly see ten 

 yards ahead of me. Thar, Hira Singh, and tiffin 

 coolie were alike completely blotted out, but the 



58 * 



