We were too busy during these weeks to do any shooting. But a curious bit of _shikar_ fell to my lot one day. While I was superintending the building of the fort a sepoy who had been gathering stones for the wall ran up to tell me that he had seen some curious little animals in the _nullah_. Borrowing an ancient Martini rifle from a native officer, I ran down to the river-bed and found several wild dogs playing on the sand a few hundred yards away in front of a small island covered with thick undergrowth. On seeing me they bolted. I took a hurried shot at one and missed it, the bullet glancing off a rock behind which the dog had disappeared. To my horror a low wailing cry issued from the bushes on the island behind. Alarmed at the thought that I might have wounded one of my sepoys, I ran to the spot. There to my astonishment I found a barking deer standing up with half its face blown away. The unlucky beast had been struck by my chance bullet. Its shrieks were piteous and almost human, until we put it out of its pain. Another day a sepoy cutting bamboos was disturbed by a herd of wild elephants. He had the sense to remain motionless; and the animals passed without seeing him. One evening another man met a more dangerous beast. He had gone down at dusk to bathe in the river just below the fort and came face to face with a panther drinking. The man was unarmed; but fortunately for him the brute only growled and trotted away. One Sunday afternoon we had a serious alarm. No work being done on that day two of the native officers, taking a few sepoys with them, had gone out with shot-guns to look for jungle fowl. Splitting up into two parties they separated and beat through the undergrowth a few hundred yards away from the fort. Suddenly one of them came upon a tiger which snarled viciously at them and retreated in a direction which would bring him upon the other party. With this was Subhedar Sohanpal Singh, the sturdy old Rajput who had been my companion in the long chase after the rogue elephant.