I will
not go into tedious details of the journey--we slept and woke and slept
again, and smoked, and occasionally concocted iced drinks from our
supplies, for in India the carriages are so large that the traveller
generally provides himself with a generous basket of provisions and a
travelling ice-chest full of bottles, and takes a trunk or two with him
in his compartment. Suffice it to say that we arrived on the following
day at Fyzabad in Oude, and that we were there met by guides and
shikarries--the native huntsmen--who assured us that there were tigers
about near the outlying station of Pegnugger, where the elephants,
previously ordered, would all be in readiness for us on the following
day. The journey from Fyzabad to Pegnugger was not a long one, and we
set out in the cool of the evening, sending our servants along in that
"happy-go-lucky" fashion which characterises Indian life. It has always
been a mystery to me how native servants manage always to turn up at the
right moment. You say to your man, "Go there and wait for me," and you
arrive and find him waiting; though how he transferred himself thither,
with his queer-looking bundle, and his lota, and cooking utensils, and
your best teapot wrapped up in a newspaper and ready for use, and with
all the other hundred and one things that a native servant contrives to
carry about without breaking or losing one of them, is an unsolved
puzzle.
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