left the station it chose to be up to time. It must have been an amusing incident to the people in the station, but I would have enjoyed it more had I been one of the natives watching from a third-class carriage instead of, so to speak, one of the principal actors. There was the engine shrieking in its anxiety to start; there was our luggage neatly spread all over an empty compartment; there was Autolycus protesting shrilly that the train could not leave without his sahib, who was a very burra sahib; and finally there we were with scarlet faces, topis on the backs of our heads, surrounded by a thick cloud of dust, careering wildly into the station.
After all the fuss, we had only about thirty miles to travel, when we got out and drove three miles in a kind of native cart to a dâk-bungalow, a very poor and uncomfortable specimen of its kind. It didn't uplift us to hear that plague was very bad all round, and after a somewhat jungly dinner during which we were very thoughtful and disinclined for conversation, we sought our mildewed couches, to rise again at skreich of day and continue our journey, till late on Tuesday night we got out finally at Baratah station and drove out to our present camping-ground. The people knew we were coming, and the tents were up; but they hadn't
