After making the tired man draw innumerable sketch-maps in the sand, with reiterated descriptions of the hut, &c., I allowed the poor wretch to go to his dinner; and in anticipation of a weary night's watch, I squeezed my eyes together and tried to sleep. The sun begins to acquire his evening slant, and I joyfully leave my bed to prepare for my nocturnal expedition. The cook is boiling fowl and potatoes; they are ready; and now he pours his clear strong coffee into the three soda-water bottles by his side; everything is ready, in the little basket, not forgetting a bottle of good beer. Now then commences the pleasing task of carefully loading our battery. Come, big "Sam Nock," king of two-ouncers, what is to be the fate of these two great plumbs that you are now to swallow? Am I to cut them out of the tiger's ribs to-morrow?--or are they idly to be fired away into the trunk of a tree, or drawn again? All loaded, and pony saddled, let us start: the two white cows and their calves; the matress and blanket rolled up and carried on a Cooly's head: Shikaree, horsekeeper, and a village man with the three guns, while I myself bring up the rear. Over a few ploughed fields, and past that large banian-tree, the jungle begins. What is this black thing? and what are those people doing? That hideous black image is the jungle god, and to him the villagers look for protection for their flocks. How they stare at the man dressed in his mud-colored clothes, who has come so far, and sacrifices sleep and comfort, to sit and watch at night for the evil genius of their jungles. Children are held up to look at him--at the English jungle-wallah, who drinks brandy as they drink milk, and who is on his way to the deepest fastnesses of the wooded waste, to watch for the tiger alone--a man who laughs at gods and devils--a devil himself. The Shikaree, who had been earnestly engaged in conversation with the oldest looking man of the group, now ran up and informed me that the Gooroo had given him to understand that the Sahib would certainly kill the tiger this night, and that it was expected that he would subscribe fifteen rupees to the god, in the event of the prediction proving true. Come, we have no time for talking. Hurry on, cows and guns, hurry on! through the silent jungle, along the narrow path. How much farther yet. Not more than a quarter of a mile; we are close to it. And now the people who know the whereabouts stop and look smilingly on one another, and then at the Sahib, whose practised eye has but just discovered the well-built ambush.