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It was an odd fancy, which I made no effort to combat. Naturally there was more truffled turkey and pâté de foie gras and boar’s head for us! Algy was a successful shot, and reaped the reward of his energy in respectable bags of black buck, hares, sand grouse, chickhira, bustard, peacock—no, though sorely tempted, he refrained from bagging the bird specially sacred to his hosts. Days and nights went by, and so far we were as unsuccessful as our forerunners. In spite of our fat and enticing young buffalo, whom we sometimes sat over from sunset until the pale wintry dawn glimmered along the horizon, we never caught one glimpse of the object of our expedition. Algy was restless, Nuddoo at his wits’ end, whilst Jones had given up the quest as a bad job!

One evening we all gathered round the big fire in the village “chowk” (for the nights were chilly), having a “bukh” with the elders, and, being encompassed by a closely investing audience of the entire population—including, of course, infants in arms—our principal topic was the brute that had so successfully eluded us.