The judge had two noble shekarrie, or hunting elephants, trained to face the tiger, and for sport in general, which stood ready caparisoned, with their flaming red jhools, or housings, in front of the tent. In the howdah of one of them I took my seat, whilst the judge occupied that of the other.
Duly seated, guns secured, brandy and lunch stowed away in the khowas or dicky, the stately brutes rose at the command of the drivers from their recumbent postures; the orderly Cossack-looking horsemen mounted; the troop of beaters shouldered their long laties or poles, and we were instantly bearing away in full swing for the sporting-ground. This lay at the distance of three or four miles from our encampment, and consisted of a long shallow jheel or lake, skirted by tracks of rank grass, terminating in cultivation, villages, and groves of trees.
The elephant moves both legs at one side simultaneously, consequently the body rises and falls, and his motion is that of a ship at sea, and I felt before I tried it that I should make nothing of my first attempt to shoot off one.
We now formed line, the judge’s elephant at one extremity, or pretty nearly so, and mine at the other, and advanced.
“Keep a good look-out, Gernon,” cried my host; “we shall have something up immediately.”
He had scarcely uttered the words, when up flustered a huge bird from under the elephants feet, towering perpendicularly overhead; his burnished throat, golden hues, and long sweeping tail, proclaimed him at once a wild peacock. I endeavoured to cover him, but all in vain, my gun’s muzzles, like the poet’s eye, were alternately directed “from earth to heaven,” through the up-and-down motion of the elephant. However, I blazed away both barrels, but without touching a feather. On attaining a certain elevation, he struck off horizontally, wings expanded, cleaving the air like a meteor; but, passing to the rear of my companion, he, with the greatest sang-froid, rose, turned round in his howdah, and dropped him as dead as a stone, amidst cries of lugga lugga (“hit”)! mara (“killed”)! and wau, wau (“bravo”)!
It is not considered very sportsmanlike to shoot the full-grown peacock in India; the chicks are, however, capital eating, and are often bagged. In this instance, the judge had evidently brought down the peacock for my gratification; this I inferred from his immediately sending it to me by one of his horsemen, who hoisted it up into the howdah at the end of his spear.
As we advanced farther into the long grass, evidences of the deserved character of the spot began to thicken around us; black partridges rose every moment, and the judge tumbled them over right and left, but not a feather could I touch.
Our line now made a sweep, with a view to emerging from the grass, and immediately a beautiful sight presented itself; it was a whole herd of antelopes, roused by our beaters from their repose, and which went off before us, bounding with the grace of Taglioni. Two sharp cracks, and lugga, lugga! proclaimed that Mr. Sympkin had laid an embargo on one or more of them. This proved to be the case, and a fine black buck antelope, with spiral horns and a white streak down his side, and a fawn about half-grown, were soon seen dangling from the broad quarters of the elephant.
On approaching the very verge of the long grass, a cry of sewer, sewer! was followed by a wild hog’s bolting. I fired at him, and put a few shots in the hindquarters of one of the judge’s horses, who thereat reared and plunged, jerked off his rider’s cap, and had nearly dismounted the rider himself, whom I could hear muttering a few curses at my awkwardness. The judge also discharged a brace of barrels at him, but he got off, and we saw him for a great distance scouring across the plain.