136 THE PANTHER I DID NOT SHOOT 



to sell for fuel, and the billhooks of their mothers 

 that hacked away the bushes and grubbed up their 

 very roots to burn on the household cooking hole. 

 Then the torrential rains of the south-west monsoon 

 came down on the naked, defenceless, parched and 

 cracked soil and swept it in muddy cascades down 

 to the sea, leaving fiats of bare rock, strewn thick 

 with round stones, sore to the best-shod foot of man 

 and cruel to the hoofs of a horse. About and among 

 the huts of the unswept and malodorous hamlet 

 just above the shore there were fine trees, mango, 

 tamarind, babool and bor, showing what might 

 have been elsewhere. 



On the rounded top of the highest hill frowned in 

 black ruin an old Mahratta fort, covered on the top 

 and sides and choked within by that dense mass 

 of struggling vegetation which always takes posses- 

 sion of old forts in India. The weather-worn stones 

 and crumbling mortar seem to feed the trees to 

 gluttony. First some bird drops the seeds of the 

 banian fig into crevices of the ramparts, and its 

 insidious roots push their way and grow and grow 

 into great tortuous snakes, embracing the massive 

 blocks of basalt, heaving them up and holding them 

 up, so that they cannot fall. Then prickly shrubs 

 and thorny trees follow, fighting for every inch of 

 ground, but quite unable to eject the gently persistent 

 custard-apple, descended doubtless irom seeds which 

 the garrison dropped as they ate the luscious fruit, 

 on account of which the Portuguese introduced the 



