Note (return) — Travels
Reading edition
"All being reported present, we resumed our journey, the men screaming chorus to scare our unwelcome visitors, whom I several times fancied I heard rustling among the brushwood on the road side, as though they were moving on our flanks in order to cut off any straggler who might drop astern. I never saw bearers go more expeditiously, or in more compact order, every man fearing to be the last in the cavalcade.1 A sheet would have covered the whole party! The tigers, if they had calculated upon one of our number for their evening meal, must have gone supperless to their lair, for we mustered all our twenty-four men in the morning. A dâk hurkarah (post messenger) had been carried off in the same spot two days before, probably by the same family of tigers, which according to the bearer's account, consisted of two old ones, and three cubs.