vermilion, dull red, indigo and sky-blue, saffron and pink
and turquoise; the water faithfully doubling everything. But the first
impression was of the unreality of the sight, for the Englishman found
himself thinking of the Simla Fine Arts Exhibition and the overdaring
amateurs who had striven to reproduce scenes such as these. Then a
woman rose up, and clasping her hands behind her head, looked at the
passing boat, and the ripples spread out from her waist, in blinding
white silver, far across the water. As a picture, a daringly insolent
picture, it was superb.

The boat turned aside to shores where huge turtles were lying, and a
stork had built her a nest, big as a haycock, in a withered tree, and a
bevy of coots were flapping and gabbling in the weeds or between great
leaves of the _Victoria regia_--an "escape" from the State Gardens. Here
were divers and waders, kingfishers and snaky-necked birds of the
cormorant family, but no duck. They had seen the guns in the boat and
were flying to and fro in companies across the lake, or settling--wise
things!--in the glare of the sun on the water. The lake was swarming
with them, but they seemed to know exactly how far a twelve-bore would
carry. Perhaps their knowledge had been gained from the Englishman at
the Residency. Later, as the sun left the lake, and the hills began to
glow like opals, the boat made her way to the shallow side of the lake,
through fields of watergrass and dead lotus-raffle that rose as high as
the bows, and clung lovingly about the rudder, and parted with the noise
of silk when it is torn. There she waited for the fall of twilight when
the duck would come home to bed, and the Englishman sprawled upon the
cushions in deep content and laziness, as he looked across to where two
marble Palaces floated upon the waters, and saw all the glory and beauty
of the City, and wondered whether Tod, in cocked hat and stiff stock,
had ever come shooting among the reeds, and, if so, how in the world he
had ever managed to bowl over....

"Duck and drake, by Jove! Confiding beasts, weren't they. Hi! Lalla,
jump out and get them!" It was a brutal thing, this double-barrelled
murder perpetrated in the silence of the marsh when the kingly wild-duck
came back from his wanderings with his mate at his side, but--but--the
birds were very good to eat.

If the Venetian owned the Pichola Sagar he might say with justice: "See
it and die." But it is better to live and go to din