_Copy letter on subject of "Duck."_
[Illustration]
Dear B,--There are still a few minutes before old Sol gets his face
under cover, so I am going to let you know of my first great day's
Indian Shikar! It was A.1. from start to finish, though an old resident
here might laugh at its being given such a fine term. I know that it
would have been as interesting to you as it was to me; it was so
different from anything we have at home.
I met a man at the club who said, "Won't you come with us to-morrow
(Sunday) and have a try for duck?" and I jumped--haven't had anything in
way of exercise, bar a little mild riding and tennis for weeks. These
fellows are so busy all the week they put in the Sunday out of doors
shooting. Don't you wish we could too? You know everyone shoots here, it
is free--one of the reasons so many of our best young fellows come
out--men who haven't got ancestral or rented acres to shoot over.
Quarter past six, _mon ami_, was the hour fixed--I shudderd! By the
way, most of these men were dancing yesterday afternoon till 7-45--at
tennis previously, and at bridge till the small hours. Isn't that a rum
way of doing things--the ladies dancing till after 7 o'clock, then
dashing home to dress, and here at this bungalow to dinner at little
after eight.
Turned out at a quarter to six--fifteen minutes later than I
intended--fault of my "Boy"--tumbled into sort of shooting kit, and
partly dressed as I scooted along the avenue through the park--compound
I believe it should be called--the night watchman legging it along with
my bag and gun. I believe a jackal slunk past; it was getting
light--first jackal I've seen outside a menagerie--an event for persons
like us? When I got to the avenue gate where these other heroes were to
meet me, the deuce a shadow of one was there--only a native with
something on his head. So I did more dressing and cussing because I was
ten minutes behind time and thought they must have gone on.
Gradually the light increased. Dawn spread her rosy fingers over the
pepal fig trees that lined the road; the fruit-eating flying-foxes
sought their fragrant nests or roosts, and noiselessly folded their
membraneous wings till next time. And the native turned out to have a
luncheon basket on his head so my heart rose, and by and bye a big
fellow in khaki stravaiged out of the shades--a jovial, burly Britisher
called "Boots,"--told me he was hunting up the other fellows, and that
they had got home late last night--this about half an hour after time
fixed--so much for Indian punctuality hereaway! After some time another
shooter arrived behind two white oxen, taking both sides of the road in
a sort of big governess cart. Then Boots, who had hunted out a man
Monteith, came up in a third dumbie, as their ox carts are called here.
These go like anything if you can keep them in the straight, but the
oxen are dead set on bolting right or left up any road or compound
avenue. Boots told me: going to dine one night, he had been taken up to
three bungalows willy nilly before he got to the right one. The reins go
through bullocks' noses, so by Scripture that _should_ guide them. We
went off at a canter, and hadn't got a mile when Boots and Monteith's
dumbie dashed at right angles across a bridge to the cemetery; we
followed, missing the edge of the bridge by an inch,--pulled round and
went off on the straight again--seven miles in the cool of the morning,
grey sky, soft light, new birds, new trees, new country, no mistake it
was pleasant. Here is a sketch (much reduced) the dumbie following us.
As we went at a canter it was not very easy to do!
[Illustration]
At the tank or loch we disembarked amongst a motley crowd of
natives--got men to carry cartridge bags, and then we surrounded the
tank, a place about three-quarters of a mile long by a quarter broad.
M. got into a portable, square, flat-bottomed canvas boat he had sent
the day before, and his heathen boatman, who swore he could row, cut
branches to hide both of them from the duck. This arrangement looked
like a fair sized table decoration, a conspicuous man in a topee with a
gun at one end, and a black white-turbaned native at the other. Away
they went, left oar, right oar! I watched these simple manoeuvres from
the far side, where, like the other guns, I was posted at the water's
edge, in full view of the duck which were swimming about in mid water,
chuckling at us I am sure. The native's rowing was a sight! first one
oar high in the air, then the other. I saw Monteith had to change and
did both rowing and shooting, probably the native had never seen a boat
in his life! When M. began firing at the duck at long range, they got up
the usual way, straight up, and then flew round and round, high up. I
didn't know whether to watch the duck or enjoy looking at the village
scene opposite, for it was at once delightfully new and delightfully
familiar. There were mud-built cottages among feathery-foliaged trees
with wide roofs of thatch of a silver grey colour, and above them were
two or three palms against the sky. Biblical looking ladies went to and
fro between lake and village, and each carried on her head a large,
black, earthenware bowl steadied by one hand, and a smaller brass pot
swinging in the other. Blue-black buffaloes and white and yellow cows
sauntered on the sloping banks, watched by men in white clothes and
turbans--it was all very sweet and peaceful in the soft morning light.
[Illustration]
The ducks flew high of course, just out of range, but we banged away
merrily at anything inside ninety yards! M. in the boat got within range
of some confiding pochard, and we on shore got a few by flukes. They
kept circling round for a long time as the other tanks in neighbourhood
were almost dried up. Then it got very hot and I for one was glad to get
my back against an aloe for a little shade and concealment, and
sketched, and fired occasionally to be sociable, as a duck came within
say eighty yards. See sketch and the futility of concealment. I thought
it very delightful--the shooting was not too engrossing, the landscape
was charming, and the village life interesting, and the simplicity of
the whole proceeding distinctly amusing. F., one of our party, on the
other side from me kept potting away regularly. He was surrounded with
natives; his ideas as to what was "in shot" were great! Still, he told
me the natives always swore he hit. The duck out here don't seem to mind
small shot at a hundred or two hundred yards more than they do at home!
Pretty white herons sailed round occasionally without fear, and
sometimes I could positively hardly see for grey-green dragon flies
hovering in front; there was one tern, or sea swallow--my favourite
bird; but how came it do you think, so far from the sea?
[Illustration]
Most of the duck had cleared off to other tanks by ten o'clock, so the
fusilade stopped and we returned to the shade of a many-stemmed and
rooted banyan tree where the desert met the sown, and had lunch and
felt quite the old Indian, eating fearfully hot curry pasties and spiced
sandwiches, as per sketch.
My five shooter is quite a novelty here, so I had to take it to bits and
show how it worked, or rather, I began to show how it worked, did
something wrong, and had to take it all to bits on this inauspicious
occasion.
[Illustration]
We shot on languidly till about one, that is, sat in the heat and
occasionally let off a shot at a very wide duck, and another member of
our party took his turn in the boat with a professed oarsmen from the
village who was worse than the first, so we gave up, one by one and
dawdled up to the village, picking up some dead duck on the way. Here is
a jotting of our retriever--a native who slung a bundle of dry pithy
sticks under one arm, waded out, and swam along somehow, with an
overhand stroke, not elegant but fairly effective.--I also made jottings
of buffaloes in the water, all but submerged, water lilies, little white
herons, and women in bright colours washing clothes in reflections! What
subjects for pictures--rather shoppy this for you? The buffaloes walked
sometimes entirely under water for some two or three yards--and then
they came up and blew like seals!--by all the saints, isn't this just
the Kelpie we have heard of from Sandy and Donald and Padruigh--and how
"It" comes up from the dark water and the lilies in the dusk, like a
great black cow, with staring eyes and dripping weeds hanging from its
mouth and shoulders!
[Illustration]
I found the party under the shade of pepal trees beside the inverted
boat, and the lunch basket, surrounded by the villagers of all ages. In
front on the dust, in sunlight, a brown woman danced and whipped her
bare flesh with a cord like a serpent, and another woman in soft,
hanging, Madonna-like draperies, with a kid astride her hip and asleep
on her breast, beat a tom-tom vigorously. The dancing woman's steps were
the first of our sword dance--you see them round the world; she had
ragged black hair, dusty brown skin, with various bits of coloured
clothes twisted round her hips. Of the violent light and shade, and hot
reflected light from the sandy red ground, and restless movements, I
could only make this ghost of a sketch. Behind the women was a box, open
on the side next us, fitted up as a shrine; in it sat an Indian goddess
in vermilion and gold, with minor deities round her, all very fearsome.
I was told it was a cholera goddess, and the dancing was to propitiate
her and drive cholera out of the village. I'd fain remember the light
and shade and colour, but it is difficult to do these unfamiliar scenes
from memory; of scenes at home one can grasp more in the time, for many
forms are familiar and others one can reason from these--that they must
be so--this last a risky business--and query: is it Art or
Fake?--forgive shop again, awfully sorry.
[Illustration]
The drive home in mid-day sun with no shade was pretty considerably hot,
through miles of unsheltered, hot, dusty road, but with regular tiger
jungle on either side! Some of us slept--for me there was too much heat
and too much to see for that.
[Illustration]
I think we got fourteen duck. There were pochard and pintail and one
like a mallard. The pochard are good to eat here.
To-morrow we go South--both sorry and glad to go--sorry to leave the
little social circle and glad to be on the road again. Again we have had
a glimpse of how quickly friends are made here. I suppose the extreme
isolation makes one white man realise his dependence on the next white
man, so that they naturally make the best of each other and become
friends quickly.
Krishna bustles round packing things--bustles is hardly the word though,
for his barefooted, silent effectiveness. And snoring hardly the word
for the noise that son of a thief, the watchman, makes outside.