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This delicacy of nerve renders the elephant exceedingly timid after being wounded, and it is a common and regrettable occurrence that an elephant which has been an excellent shikar animal before it has been injured, becomes useless to face a tiger after it has been badly clawed. I cannot understand the carelessness of an owner who thus permits a good elephant to work unprotected.
In the darkness of night, without a moon, to hunt single-handed, and to kill, a full-grown bear with a revolver, was in my experience an unprecedented triumph in shikar. Early on the following morning I sent for the bear's skin. It proved to be a large silver-tipped, and a close examination exhibited the difficulties of the encounter during darkness.
The time set apart for diary-writing is the hour which properly intervenes between chota hasri and the announcement of my bath; but, somehow, there never seems to be very much time. Either the early tea is late or bath is early, or a shikar expedition, with a grass slipper in pursuit of flies, takes up the precious moments, and so the business of the day gets all behindhand.
They set out on Thursday, the military holiday, in a state of high good-humour with themselves and their host; to return on Sunday evening, renewed in body and mind by the pursuit of pig and the spirit of Shikar, that keeps a man sane and virile, and tempers the insidious effect, on the white races, of life and work in the climate of India.
This is a very rare qualification, but most necessary in a good shikar elephant. Some tuskers will attack the tiger, which is nearly as bad a fault as running in the opposite direction; but the generality, even if tolerably steady, will swing suddenly upon one side, and thus interrupt the steadiness of aim.
Where other men took ten days to the Hills, Strickland took leave for what he called shikar, put on the disguise that appealed to him at the time, stepped down into the brown crowd, and was swallowed up for a while. He was a quiet, dark young fellow spare, black-eyes and, when he was not thinking of something else, a very interesting companion.
This is a common thing, as the Sahib knoweth, when dust and sun combine against the eyes of those who have read over-many books and written over-much with the steel pen upon white paper, and my brother was somewhat prone to this trouble in the desert if he exhausted himself with excessive shikar and other matters. And this angered him greatly.
This morning we were up betimes, Mrs. Locock having ordained a bear "honk"! This was, to me, a new departure in shikar, and truly it was amusing to see the shikari, bursting with importance, mustering the forty half-naked coolies whom he had collected to beat.
Remember only, that though I never can come round to your sphere, you must some day come round to me, when wounds, or weariness, or merely, as I hope, a healthy old age, shall shut you out for once and for all from burra shikar, whether human or quadruped. For you surely will not take to politics in your old age?
One hot afternoon, Grantham, who was a keen sportsman, took his gun, and, accompanied by a wiry little Shan servant, departed into the jungle on shikar thoughts intent. He was less successful than usual; indeed, he had proceeded fully three miles before he saw anything worth emptying his gun at. In the jungle the air was as close as a hothouse, and the perspiration ran down his face in streams.
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