Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon

by Sir Samuel White Baker

While I was opening the elk, with the pack all round me licking their lips in expectation, old "Madcap" was jostled by one of the greyhounds, and slipped into a basin among the rocks, which formed an edge of about two feet above the surface.

The opposite side of the pool was hemmed in by rocks about six feet high, and the direction of the under-current was at once shown by poor old "Madcap" being swept up against this high wall of rock, where she remained paddling with all her might in an upright position.

I saw the poor beast would be sucked under, and yet I could not save her. However, I did my best at the risk of falling in myself.

I took off my handkerchief and made a slip-knot, and begging Pelly to lie down on the top of the rock, I took his hand while I clung to the face of the wall as I best could by a little ledge of about two inches' width.

With great difficulty I succeeded in hooking the bitch's head in the slip-knot, but in my awkward position I could not use sufficient strength to draw her out. I could only support her head above the water, which I could distinctly feel was drawing her from me. Presently she gave a convulsive struggle, which freed her head from the loop, and in an instant she disappeared.

I could not help going round the rock to see if her body should be washed out when the torrent reappeared, when, to my astonishment, up she popped all right, not being more than half drowned by her subterranean excursion, and we soon helped her safe ashore. Fortunately for her, the passage had been sufficiently large to pass her, although I have no doubt a man would have been held fast and drowned.

There was so much water in the river that I determined to move from this locality as too dangerous for hunting. I therefore ordered the village people to assemble on the following morning to carry the loads and tent. In the mean time I sent for the dead elk.

There could riot be a better place for a hunting-box than that cave. We soon had a glorious fire roaring round the kennel-pot, which, having been well scoured with sand and water, was to make the soup. Such soup!—shades of gourmands, if ye only smelt that cookery! The pot held six gallons, and the whole elk, except a few steaks, was cut up and alternately boiled down in sections. The flesh was then cut up small for the pack, the marrowbones reserved for "master," and the soup was then boiled until it had evaporated to the quantity required. A few green chilies, onions in slices fried, and a little lime-juice, salt, black pepper and mushroom ketchup, and—in fact, there is no rise thinking of it, as the soup is not to be had again. The fire crackled and blazed as the logs were heaped upon it as night grew near, and lit up all the nooks and corners of the old cave. Three beds in a row contained three sleepy mortals. The hounds snored and growled, and then snored again. The servants jabbered, chewed betel, spit, then jabbered a little more, and at last everything and everybody was fast asleep within the cave.

The next morning we had an early breakfast and started, the village people marching off in good spirits with the loads. I was now en route for Bertram's patinas, which lay exactly over the mountain on the opposite side of the river. This being perpendicular, I was obliged to make a great circuit by keeping the old Newera Ellia path along the river for two or three miles, and then, turning off at right angles, I knew an old native trace over the ridge. Altogether, it was a round of about six miles, although the patinas were not a mile from the cave in a straight line.

The path in fact terminates upon the high peak, exactly opposite the cave, looking down upon my hunting-ground of the day before, and on the other side the ridge lie Bertram's patinas.