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We could see the group from where we sat, in the shadow of the connât, and the different expressions of the men as they came out. The little collector of Pegnugger measured and measured again; Mr. Ghyrkins stood with his hands in his coat pockets and his legs apart, then going to the other side he took up the same position again.
But a sudden thought struck me, and I went with him, bareheaded, to greet Miss Westonhaugh. She smiled brightly as she held out her hand. "Good morning, Mr. Isaacs. Thank you so much for the roses. How did you do it? They are too lovely!" So it was just as I thought. Isaacs had probably despatched a man back to Pegnugger in the night. "Very easy I assure you. I am so glad you like them.
Suffice it to say that we arrived on the following day at Fyzabad in Oude, and that we were there met by guides and shikarries the native huntsmen who assured us that there were tigers about near the outlying station of Pegnugger, where the elephants, previously ordered, would all be in readiness for us on the following day.
I left a running man at Pegnugger with a basket, and that is how you got the roses. Don't tell the collector, that is all." We all laughed, and Miss Westonhaugh gave the rose to Isaacs, who touched it to his lips, under pretence of smelling it, and put it in his buttonhole.
The track led away to my left, nearly opposite to the elephant bearing Mr. Ghyrkins and his niece. The little Pegnugger man was on my right. The native held on, moving more and more rapidly as he found himself following a single track. I shouted to him to Ghyrkins to everybody, but they could not make the doomed man understand what I saw the freshly slain head of the tiger's last victim.
There was also the little collector of Pegnugger, whose small body housed a stout heart, for he had shot tigers on foot before now in company with a certain German doctor of undying sporting fame, whose big round spectacles seemed to direct his bullets with unerring precision.
We reached camp about three o'clock, in the heat of the afternoon. The injured beater was put in a servant's tent to be sent off to Pegnugger in a litter in the cool of the night. There was a doctor there who would take care of him under the collector's written orders. The camp was in a shady place, quite unlike the spot where we had first pitched our tents.
I wondered where they had come from; they were roses of all flowers in the world to be blooming in the desert. Perhaps she had brought them carefully from Fyzabad, but that was improbable; or from Pegnugger yes, there would be roses in the collector's garden there. Isaacs rose to his feet. "Oh, come along, Griggs. You have had quite enough tea!" "Go ahead; I will be with you in a moment."
"And do you never sing English songs, Mr. Isaacs?" asked the collector of Pegnugger, who was enchanted, not having heard a note of music for months. "Oh, sometimes," he answered. "I think I could sing 'Drink to me only with thine eyes' do you know it?" He began to play the melody on the guitar while he spoke. "Rather I should think so!" Kildare was heard to say.
Marching and counter-marching through the heat of the day, we picked up another-prize in the afternoon. It was a large old tiger, nine feet six as he lay; he fell an easy prey to the gun of the little collector of Pegnugger, who sent a bullet through his heart at the first shot, and smiled rather contemptuously as he removed the empty shell of the cartridge from his gun.
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