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were tattooed with dark blue patterns, so intricate that he might have been wearing drawers of blue
lace. A bamboo the thickness of a man’s wrist had fallen and hung across the path. The leading beater
severed it with an upward flick of his dah; the prisoned water gushed out of it with a diamond-flash.
After half a mile they reached the open fields, and everyone was sweating, for they had walked fast
and the sun was savage.
‘That’s where we’re going to shoot, over there,’ Flory said.
He pointed across the stubble, a wide dust-coloured plain, cut up into patches of an acre or two by
mud boundaries. It was horribly flat, and lifeless save for the snowy egrets. At the far edge a jungle of
great trees rose abruptly, like a dark green cliff. The beaters had gone across to a small tree like a
hawthorn twenty yards away. One of them was on his knees, shikoing to the tree and gabbling, while
the old hunter poured a bottle of some cloudy liquid onto the ground. The others stood looking on with
serious, bored faces, like men in church.
‘What are those men doing?’ Elizabeth said.
‘Only sacrificing to the local gods. Nats, they call them–a kind of dryad. They’re praying to him to
bring us good luck.’
The hunter came back and in a cracked voice explained that they were to beat a small patch of
scrub over to the right before proceeding to the main jungle. Apparently the Nat had counselled this.
The hunter directed Flory and Elizabeth where to stand, pointing with his dah. The six beaters
plunged into the scrub; they would make a detour and beat back towards the paddy fields. There were
some bushes of the wild rose thirty yards from the jungle’s edge, and Flory and Elizabeth took cover
behind one of these, while Ko S’la squatted down behind another bush a little distance away, holding
Flo’s collar and stroking her to keep her quiet. Flory always sent Ko S’la to a distance when he was
shooting, for he had an irritating trick of clicking his tongue if a shot was missed. Presently there was
a far-off echoing sound–a sound of tapping and strange hollow cries; the beat had started. Elizabeth at
once began trembling so uncontrollably that she could not keep her gun-barrel still. A wonderful bird,
a little bigger than a thrush, with grey wings and body of blazing scarlet, broke from the trees and
came towards them with a dipping flight. The tapping and the cries came nearer. One of the bushes at
the jungle’s edge waved violently–some large animal was emerging. Elizabeth raised her gun and
tried to steady it. But it was only a naked yellow beater, dah in hand. He saw that he had emerged and
shouted to the others to join him.
Elizabeth lowered her gun. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing. The beat’s over.’
‘So there was nothing there!’ she cried in bitter disappointment.
‘Never mind, one never gets anything the first beat. We’ll have better luck next time.’
They crossed the lumpy stubble, climbing over the mud boundaries that divided the fields, and took
up their position opposite the high green wall of the jungle. Elizabeth had already learned how to load
her gun. This time the beat had hardly started when Ko S’la whistled sharply.
‘Look out!’ Flory cried. ‘Quick, here they come!’
A flight of green pigeons were dashing towards them at incredible speed, forty yards up. They
were like a handful of catapulted stones whirling through the sky. Elizabeth was helpless with