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"It is all sincere, and I can make you very welcome in good old English fashion as long as you like to stay you, Captain Down, and you, Maine. You make the Captain come too. I promise you plenty of sport. My shikaris know their business. Once more, good-night."
A hundred feet to the right and the left, under like protection, were two of my companions, determined like myself to be successful in three points, to have the first shot at the pigs, to avoid getting shot, or shooting a neighbor. But our minds rose above mental cautions with the first faint halloos of the Hindu shikaris on the opposite side of the jungle.
Sometimes the thundering, prolonged roars of tigers rose from the bottom of the precipices thickly covered with all kinds of vegetation. Shikaris assure us that, on a quiet night, the roaring of these beasts can be heard for many miles around. The panorama, lit up, as if by Bengal fires, changed at every turn.
The Doctor at once took the matter in hand, and drove out the next morning to the village from which he had received news about the tiger, had a long talk with the shikaris of the place, took a general view of the country, settled the line in which the beat should take place, and arranged for a large body of beaters to be on the spot at the time agreed on.
We had a large force of men, and several shikaris of long experience in the locality; it was accordingly a wise course to remain silent, as the people would have been confused by unnecessary orders. Having left the line of men in position, we were taken about a mile in advance.
"We were big-game hunting, lion and rhino preferred, along the border of Somaliland," he continued. "Besides the pony and camel men, we had four Somali shikaris, trained trackers, who knew the habits of beasts and read their tracks and signs like a book; men of a breed whose women will not give themselves as wives except to men who have scored kills of both royal game and men.
Great precaution is necessary in making all preliminary arrangements. It is a common custom of native shikaris to tie up a buffalo where four paths meet, as the tiger would be walking along one of these during the night, and it could not help seeing the alluring bait.
I always make a point of allowing the Government reward as a bonus, without any deductions for buffalo baits or beaters, and this amount I divide among the shikaris and mahouts according to my estimation of their merits; this gives them an additional interest in the proceedings.
Ahmed Bot, however, was of opinion that all sahibs who wanted sport required two shikaris, so I imagined that while I was to be engaged with one in pursuit of bara singh, the other would employ himself in "rounding up" a few tigers for the next day's sport in another direction. Ahmed Bot agreed with me in the main, but did not feel at all sure about the tigers he proposed ibex.
The beaters and shikaris now arrived, and having explained the incident, we examined the ground for tracks, and quickly found the claw-marks which were deeply indented in the parched surface of fine sward. We followed these tracks cautiously into the jungle. Our party consisted of Colonel Lugard, the Hon. D. Leigh, myself, and two experienced shikaris.
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