A SERIES OF DISAPPOINTMENTS 



Once more I find myself wandering back, this time to 

 Dharvvar, and again to tell a tale of my adventures with 

 some tigers which should have been chronicled before ; 

 but for reasons already stated, I have abandoned all 

 attempt at chronological narrative, and will now relate 

 each incident as it comes back to my mind. 



The one I am now about to tell of occurred at Tadas, 

 a village some eighteen miles from Dharwar, and it was 

 during one Christmas vacation I had arranged to meet two 

 friends, who, for the purpose of this story, may be 

 designated respectively as W and M . 



From the shikaris, who had preceded us, we heard on 

 our arrival that two tigers and a panther were believed to 

 be in some outlying jungle, we had accordingly reasonable 

 expectation of good sport. 



Luck, however, was against us, for though we were 

 out almost daily on information seemingly reUable, search- 

 ing the jungle for several miles around, the beasts we 

 were in quest of always managed somehow to evade us, 

 till at last in desperation we decided to devote our attention 

 to smaller game. 



Duck and snipe were fortunately plentiful, on and 

 around the several tanks contiguous to the camp, and as 

 we had a Berthon boat with us, it helped us in this sport, 

 as well as affording us much amusement, for the boat was 

 small and frail, and our eccentric handling of it, especially 

 under sail, added much to our enjoyment of the sport. 



We had, in fact, become almost resigned to our dis- 

 appointment as regards the larger game we had hoped to 

 meet with, when one morning a man came running into 

 the camp to report that two tigers had just been marked 

 down by our shikari, who had been all this time, we knew, 

 on the look out. On cross-examination, however, this 

 Khuijhar did not seem very convincing, and having been 

 so often disappointed, we had become somewhat sceptical 

 in the matter of such news. The tigers — in this instance, 

 however — were said to be lying up in a likely covert, viz. 

 a small rocky ravine with dense masses of creepers and 

 brushwood. 



In these circumstances we decided to try our luck once 



"^^^'■'' ' accordingly lost no time in starting for the spot, 



137 



