Having issued from the grass, the judge drove his elephant alongside of mine.
“Well, how do you get on? I fear you found what I said correct, eh? You haven’t hit much?”
“Much! I haven’t hit anything, sir, except one of your sowars’ horses, I am sorry to say: it is most tantalizing! I doubt if ever I should succeed in striking an object from an elephant.”
“Oh, yes, you would,” said my host, smiling; “a little practice makes perfect; but come, we’ll try on foot, on your account, after we have taken some refreshment; we will confine ourselves to the skirts of the grass and bajrakates,[[55]] where we can see about us.”
Having refreshed ourselves with a glass of ale and some cold ham and fowl, we proceeded to try our luck on foot, and I now had the satisfaction of killing my fair share of game.
“You have never, I presume, seen the mode in which the hog-deer is taken in this part of the world?”
I answered in the negative.
“Well, then,” resumed Mr. Sympkin, “if disposed to vary your sport, we have yet time before dinner. My people have the nets, and I’ll show you how it is done; this will be something to put in the next letter you write home to astonish them all.”
Having mounted horses, which were in attendance, we proceeded at a smart amble to a pretty extensive tract of reeds lying at the distance of a mile; into this tract, which terminated rather abruptly at some distance, a line of men was placed, with here and there a horseman.
At the extremity of the tract of reeds, but in the open plain, two ranks of men, with intervals of forty or fifty paces between each man, were placed, in prolongation of the sides of the patch of reeds. These two lines converged, and were terminated at the apex of the cone by a row of nets, formed of stout tarred cords, slightly propped up by stakes.