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Long live honest, hearty, true sportsmen, such as were the friends of those happy days. Long may Indian sportsmen find plenty of 'foemen worthy of their steel' in the old grey boar, the fighting tusker of Bengal. The sal forests. The jungle goddess. The trees in the jungle. Appearance of the forests. Birds. Varieties of parrots. A 'beat' in the forest. The 'shekarry. Mehrman Singh and his gun.
What happy hours he had spent poring over Jorrock's Hunts, Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour, and the works of the Old Shekarry! When he went to a picture-gallery he was listless until he came upon some representation of moving adventure by flood or field, and then the rest of the party could hardly drag him away.
The best shekarry I ever had was a Nepaulee called 'Mehrman Singh. He had the regular Tartar physiognomy of the Nepaulese. Small, oblique, twinkling eyes, high cheekbones, flattish nose, and scanty moustache. He was a tall, wiry man, with a remarkably light springy step, a bold erect carriage, and was altogether a fine, manly, independent fellow.
There were the General, stout and inelegant, wont to take his fences carefully, who changed his weight-carrying mount thrice during the day, and liked a gateway better than a thorny hedge, and for the last fifteen years had never been in at the death; and his wife, the leader of fashion, but not yet the leader of the Hunt; the Major, an old shekarry from India, who still could ride as straight and fast as any man in the west; and his niece, the belle of the countryside, whose mettlesome hunter occasionally showed a sudden fondness for taking the bit between his teeth, and carrying his mistress, with reckless abandon, over furrow and five-barred gate and through the thickest hedgerow anywhere, so long as he had breath and the music of the hounds allured him onward in his impetuous career.
Another touch on the arm from Mehrman, and following the direction of his outstretched hand, I descried a splendid buck within thirty yards of me, his antlers and chest but barely visible above the brushwood. My gun was to my shoulder in an instant, but the shekarry in an excited whisper implored me not to fire.
Fullerton took the side nearest the river, as it was possible the brute might sneak out that way, and make her escape along the bank. The General's shekarry remained behind, in rear of the line of beaters, in case the tigress might break the line, and try to escape by the rear.
They pretend to paw up the earth, toss their make-believe horns, turn round and pretend to scratch themselves, and in fact identify themselves with the animal they are representing; and it is irresistibly comic to watch a solitary performer go through this al fresco comedy. I have laughed often at some cunning old herdsman, or shekarry.
The whole arrangements are generally made, of course under your own supervision, by your Shekarry, or gamekeeper, as I suppose you might call him. He is generally a thin, wiry, silent man, well versed in all the lore of the woods, acquainted with the name, appearance, and habits of every bird and beast in the forest. He knows their haunts and when they are to be found at home.
His hawk-like glance can pick out from the deepest shade the sleek coat or hide of the leopard or the deer; and even before the animal has come in sight, his senses tell him whether it is young or old, whether it is alarmed, or walking in blind confidence. In fact, I have known a good shekarry tell you exactly what animal is coming, whether bear, leopard, fox, deer, pig, or monkey.
A shekarry fills about four or five fingers' depth of this into his gun, then a handful of old iron, and with a little touch of English powder pricked in with a pin as priming, he is ready for execution on any game that may come within reach of a safe pot-shot.
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