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‘How soon can we start out? Do you think we’ve got enough cartridges? How many beaters shall
we take? Oh, I do so hope we have some luck! You do think we’ll get something, don’t you?’
‘Nothing wonderful, probably. We’re bound to get a few pigeons, and perhaps jungle fowl. They’re
out of season, but it doesn’t matter shooting the cocks. They say there’s a leopard round here, that
killed a bullock almost in the village last week.’
‘Oh, a leopard! How lovely if we could shoot it!’
‘It’s very unlikely, I’m afraid. The only rule with this shooting in Burma is to hope for nothing. It’s
invariably disappointing. The jungles teem with game, but as often as not you don’t even get a chance
to fire your gun.’
‘Why is that?’
‘The jungle is so thick. An animal may be five yards away and quite invisible, and half the time
they manage to dodge back past the beaters. Even when you see them it’s only for a flash of a second.
And again, there’s water everywhere, so that no animal is tied down to one particular spot. A tiger,
for instance, will roam hundreds of miles if it suits him. And with all the game there is, they need
never come back to a kill if there’s anything suspicious about it. Night after night, when I was a boy,
I’ve sat up over horrible stinking dead cows, waiting for tigers that never came.’
Elizabeth wriggled her shoulder-blades against the chair. It was a movement that she made
sometimes when she was deeply pleased. She loved Flory, really loved him, when he talked like this.
The most trivial scrap of information about shooting thrilled her. If only he would always talk about
shooting, instead of about books and Art and that mucky poetry! In a sudden burst of admiration she
decided that Flory was really quite a handsome man, in his way. He looked so splendidly manly, with
his pagri-cloth shirt open at the throat, and his shorts and puttees and shooting boots! And his face,
lined, sunburned, like a soldier’s face. He was standing with his birthmarked cheek away from her.
She pressed him to go on talking.
‘Do tell me some more about tiger-shooting. It’s so awfully interesting!’
He described the shooting, years ago, of a mangy old man-eater who had killed one of his coolies.
The wait in the mosquito-ridden machan; the tiger’s eyes approaching through the dark jungle, like
great green lanterns; the panting, slobbering noise as he devoured the coolie’s body, tied to a stake
below. Flory told it all perfunctorily enough–did not the proverbial Anglo-Indian bore always talk
about tiger-shooting?–but Elizabeth wriggled her shoulders delightedly once more. He did not realise
how such talk as this reassured her and made up for all the times when he had bored her and
disquieted her. Six shock-headed youths came down the path, carrying dahs over their shoulders, and
headed by a stringy but active old man with grey hair. They halted in front of the headman’s house,
and one of them uttered a hoarse whoop, whereat the headman appeared and explained that these
were the beaters. They were ready to start now, if the young thakinma did not find it too hot.
They set out. The side of the village away from the creek was protected by a hedge of cactus six
feet high and twelve thick. One went up a narrow lane of cactus, then along a rutted, dusty bullockcart
track, with bamboos as tall as flagstaffs growing densely on either side. The beaters marched
rapidly ahead in single file, each with his broad dah laid along his forearm. The old hunter was
marching just in front of Elizabeth. His longyi was hitched up like a loincloth, and his meagre thighs