had in
cooking anything in their wet lair, where the miserable fire of damp
sticks produced apparently little but acrid smoke.

We passed a dismal day, as, wrapped in our warmest clothes, we sat upon
our beds watching the rain turn to snow, then to hail and sleet, and
finally back to rain again; while the ever-changing wisps of grey mist
gathered thick in the glens, or "put forth an arm and crept from pine to
pine."

Towards evening the clouds broke a little, and the forest-clad steeps
appeared through them, powdered thickly with new snow. Walter and I
sallied forth from our sodden tents and held a council of war in the mud.
It was decided to quit our somewhat unsatisfactory and precarious position
early to-morrow, if fine, as the weather looked so nasty, and a squall of
wind might have awkward consequences.

_Friday, April_ 14.--A very fairly fine morning enabled us to strike camp
yesterday, and get the baggage off in good time. The Smithsons decided to
make for the jheels near the river, in order to give the duck a final
worry round before the season closes on the 15th.

My shikari having reported a good bara singh in a small nullah off the
Erin, I arranged to go in search of him. The march down to Bandipur was a
short and easy one, and we got comfortably settled on board our boats
early in the afternoon. About sunset the clouds gathered thick over the
hills which we had left, and a thunderstorm broke, its preliminary squall
throwing the crews of our fleet into a fearful fuss, and sending them on
to the bank with extra ropes and holdfasts to make all secure. An elderly
lady, with a dirty red cap and very untidy ringlets, superintended the
business with much clamour. We take her to be the wife or grandmother (not
sure which) of the skipper.

It was with an undoubted sense of solid comfort that we lay in our cosy
beds under a wooden roof, whereon the fat rain-drops sputtered, while the
thunder still crackled and banged in the distance!

We shifted before dawn to a small village a couple of miles to the east,
and at 6.30 Jane and I set out to attack the bara singh, of which the
shikari held out high hope. My wife, mounted on a rough pony, was able to
accomplish with great comfort the two miles of flat country which we had
to traverse before turning off sharp to the right along a track which led
steeply upwards through the scrub that clothed the lower part of the
nullah.

There is something unusually charming in t