Not another bullet-hole was to be found.
"When did you do it?" I asked of Bhima. "I knew not that you had fired at all."
"When he made his first leap from the thicket," he said quietly. "I feared he was going to land directly on you. The shot turned him."
At this the three discomfited claimants of the tiger-skin (which belongs to him who kills) with the heartiest English good-nature burst into roars of laughter, each at himself as well as the others, and warmly shook Bhima's hand amid a general outbreak of applause from the whole company.
Then amid a thousand jokes the tiffin-baskets were brought out, and we had a royal lunch while the tiger was "padded"—i.e., placed on one of the unoccupied elephants; and finally we got us back to camp, where the rest of the day was devoted to dinner and cheroots.
From the tiger to the town, from the cries of jackals to those of street-venders,—this is an easy transition in India; and it was only the late afternoon of the second day after the tiger-hunt when my companion and I were strolling along the magnificent Esplanade of Calcutta, having cut across the mountains, elephant-back, early in the morning to a station where we caught the down-train.
Solidity, wealth, trade, ponderous ledgers, capacious ships' bottoms, merchandise transformed to magnificence, an ample-stomached bourgeoisie,—this is what comes to one's mind as one faces the broad walk in front of Fort William and looks across the open space to the palaces, the domes, the columns of modern and English Calcutta; or again as one wanders along the strand in the evening when the aristocrats of commerce do congregate, and, as it were, gazette the lengths of their bank-balances in the glitter of their equipages and appointments; or again as one strolls about the great public gardens or the amplitudes of Tank Square, whose great tank of water suggests the luxury of the dwellers hereabout; or the numerous other paths of comfort which are kept so by constant lustrations from the skins of the water-bearers. The whole situation seems that of ease and indulgence. The very circular verandahs of the rich men's dwellings expand like the ample vests of trustees and directors after dinner. The city extends some four and a half miles along the left bank of the Hooghly, and its breadth between the "Circular Road" and the river is about a mile and a half. If one cuts off from this space that part which lies south of a line drawn eastward from the Beebee Ross Ghât to the Upper Circular Road—the northern portion thus segregated being the native town—one has a veritable city of palaces; and when to these one adds the magnificent suburbs lying beyond the old circumvallation of the "Mahratta Ditch"—Chitpore, Nundenbagh, Bobar, Simla, Sealdah, Entally, Ballygunge, Bhovaneepore, Allypore, Kidderpore—together with the riverward-sloping lawns and stately mansions of "Garden Reach" on the sea-side of town, and the great dockyards and warehouses of the right bank of the river opposite the city, one has enclosed a space which may probably vie with any similar one in the world for the appearances and the realities of wealth within it.
But if one should allow this first impression of Calcutta—an impression in which good eating and the general pampering of the flesh seem to be the most prominent features—to lead one into the belief that here is nothing but money-making and grossness, one would commit a serious mistake. It is among the rich babous, or commercial natives, of Calcutta that the remarkable reformatory movement known as "Young India" has had its origin, and it would really seem that the very same qualities of patience, of prudence, of foresight and of good sense which have helped these babous to accumulate their wealth are now about being applied to the nobler and far more difficult work of lifting their countrymen out of the degradations of old outworn customs and faiths upon some higher plane of reasonable behavior.
"In truth," said Bhima Gandharva to me one day as were taking our customary stroll along the Esplanade, "you have now been from the west of this country to the east of it. You have seen the Past of India: I wish that you may have at least a glimpse of its Future. Here comes a young babou of my acquaintance, to whom I will make you known. He is an enthusiastic member of 'Young India:' he has received a liberal education at one of the numerous schools which his order has so liberally founded in modern years, and you will, I am convinced, be pleased with the wisdom and moderation of his sentiments."