While accomplishing this latter movement, our guides detected two
huge red bears, an enormous distance off, enjoying themselves in
the evening air, and feeding and scratching themselves alternately,
as they sauntered about in the breeze. Abandoning our present stalk,
which was not promising, down we went again, and crossing about a
mile and a half of broken ground, snow, rocks, &c., we reached a wood
close to the whereabouts of our new game. F. and I, separating, had
made the place by different routes, and just as I had caught sight of
one enormous monster, F. and the shikaree appeared, just on the point
of walking into his jaws. Having, by great exertion, prevented this
catastrophe, we massed our forces, and taking off our hats, just as if
we were stalking an unpopular landed proprietor in Tipperary, we crept
up to within sixty yards of the unsuspicious monster, and fired both
together. With a howl and a grunt, the huge mass doubled himself up,
and rolled into the cover badly wounded. Being too dangerous a looking
customer to follow directly, we reloaded and made a circuit above him;
and after a short search, discovered him with his paws firmly clasped
round a young tree. By way of finishing him, I gave him the contents of
my rifle behind the ear, and we then rolled him down a ravine on to the
snow beneath, where, a heavy storm of rain, hail, and thunder coming
on, we left him alone in his glory. Putting our best legs foremost,
we made for our camp, amid a pelting shower of hail like bullets and
an incessant play of lightning around us, as we pushed our way along
the frozen torrent. About five P.M., tired and drenched, we reached
the camp, when we discovered that our tents, though extremely handy
for mountain work, were not intended to keep out much rain, and that
all our rugs, and other comforts, were almost in as moist a state as
ourselves. During the entire night it continued to hail, rain, thunder,
and lighten; and with the exception of the exact spots we were each
lying on, there was not a dry place in the tent to take refuge in.