There were three of us chumming together in a solitary little hole in the jungle, not so very far—as one counts distance in India—from Secunderabad. We were Cooper’s Hill young men; and fate and the government had given us a chance of distinguishing ourselves, and extinguishing our fellow-creatures, by the making of a branch railway including a bridge and a tunnel. So there were three of us; and a right jolly time we had on the whole. Our bungalow was a real work of art, covered with creepers, by which I do not mean to insinuate centipedes, of which, however, there were also a good few, but jessamine, plumbago, a climbing moss—which one of us had rescued from the tangle of the jungle, and coaxed to live in a more civilised position—besides many other lovely specimens. To save our valuable time, we generally addressed each other by our initials. Mine, unfortunately, spelt M. A. G., to which my companions, in moments of hilarity, sometimes added a second course of P. I. E. I was the eldest of the trio. We had not been very long at our branch-line work, when I was laid low with an exhausting attack of jungle fever and ague. My friends E. S. P. and H. F. by turns nursed me with a tenderness and care for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. I pulled through, thanks to them; but since that time, have been subject to rather severe fits of ague, from one of which I was recovering, at the time the incident happened I wish to tell you about. It had been an absolutely broiling day, and we had been driven to the verge of insanity between the heat and the flies. We were reclining, after our day’s work, on our basket sofas, on the veranda, in the cool of the evening, puffing away solemnly and silently at our brier-root pipes, when it suddenly struck us that a group of native workmen, who were superintending the cooking of their evening meal in a corner of our very improvised sort of compound, must have received some exciting intelligence. Being young and sportively inclined, we were all three fellows of one idea, and that idea was, ‘tigers.’ ‘Just call to that gaping fool and ask him what’s up,’ suggested I, in a washed-out voice. ‘St John!’ shouted E. S. P., whose voice carried farther than either of ours, clapping his hands loudly at the same time, to attract the attention of the gabbling group; and up came the tallest, thinnest native to be met in a very long day’s ride. We had christened this man ‘St John,’ first, because he wore the most fearfully and wonderfully made camel’s-hair garment that civilised eyes ever looked upon; and secondly, because he was so desperately lean and lanky, we were certain that he must feed on either locusts or grasshoppers, which are both supposed to be a very anti-fat diet.