“If we stay any longer,” Chisholm said to Lyell, “my young confrères will be starting lotus-eating again. Let us be off as soon as we can.”
And so the very next day the journey up country was commenced: by train at first, for a long long way; nobody was sorry when this part of the cruise came to an end at a station near a tall forest, with a name that was worse than Welsh to every one save Captain Lyell and a few of the attendants. By seven o’clock next morning, a start was made in the direction of the south and east.
By the evening of the third day they had left civilisation a long way behind them; they had journeyed on and on through vast tracts of jangle lands, and mighty forests clad in all the rich and varied luxuriance of a tropical summer. They had passed many a strange romantic hamlet; from the doors of the huts of grass and clay, little innocent naked children had waddled forth to stare in wonder at the cavalcade, while the simple owners offered them fruits of many kinds to eat, and water to drink. They were often tempted to get down and spend a few hours shooting, for they came to places where feathered game of many kinds abounded, especially duck and peafowl. But Lyell’s counsel was always taken, and his advice was, “Let us go on as speedily as possible towards the mountain forests, and there encamp.” And so, as the last rays of the setting sun shimmered down through the trees on them, they reached a spot which Lyell thought would do excellently well as a camping-ground.
“Oh, isn’t this a charming sight?” said Chisholm, addressing Frank, who lounged on the howdah by his side.
They were a long way behind the others. They did not mind that, however; indeed, the elephant on which they were seated, pleased the two friends far better than any other could have done. He was slow, but wondrous sure. No fears of Jowser, as Frank baptised him, taking sudden fright and dashing suddenly off and away over the jungle, as elephants sometimes do, and ending by dashing their brains out, or tumbling over some mighty precipice with them. Jowser was somewhat more than a hundred years old—a very experienced matter-of-fact old fellow, who knew better than to hurry himself. He required but little guidance—a gentle touch with a cane on his left ear or his right, as the case might be, was quite enough for him. When he stopped short sometimes, to reach above him for a few leaves to munch, his attendant would gently goad him; but Jowser would turn up the tip of his trunk to him as much as to say, “Put a handful of rice into that. That’s what Jowser wants. Jowser is hungry.”
But it suited Frank and Chisholm to be a little late of an evening, because they found their friends already encamped, probably under the banian-tree, and, better than all, supper ready—a curry of such fragrance, that even a sniff at it would have made them hungry, if they had not, as they always did have, the appetite of hunters.
The master of ceremonies did allow them one day, however, among the peafowl. In a piece of jungle—which Chisholm as usual persisted in calling a moor—they found these beautiful birds in great abundance: they were early astir that morning. They had their own beaters, who were principally Mahratta men, whom they had engaged in Bombay, and whom Lyell had armed with rifles as well as spears. “It is a mean thing,” this gallant officer said to our heroes, “to send a man into the bush unarmed; yet Englishmen constantly do it.”
Independently of these they had volunteers from among the simple Hindoo folks in whose country they were. Brave, fool-hardy in fact, but as a rule indolent, these men would work all day, for the sake of earning a morsel of tobacco.
It was a glorious day’s shooting our sportsmen, had, and it was but one of many such days they enjoyed, after their encampment at the foot of the mountains had been fairly formed. Neither of them were fond of what is called battue shooting, deeming it, as every true sportsman must, somewhat unjust to the birds; but here there were very many mouths to fill, and four guns to do all the work of filling them. So they had to make good bags.