“My dear fellow,” said Hood, “this won’t do at all. When we left Calcutta, I promised you such grand sport; and all this time, bad luck, fatality, I don’t know what to call it, nor how to understand it, has prevented me from keeping my promise!”
“Come, captain,” I replied, “you mustn’t despair. Though I do regret it, it is more on your account than my own! We shall have better luck, no doubt, on the hills!”
“Yes,” said Hood, “on the Himalayan slopes we shall set to work under more favorable conditions. You see, Maucler, I’d wager anything that our train, with all its apparatus, its steam and its roaring, and especially the gigantic elephant, terrifies the confounded brutes much more than a railway train would do, and that’s the reason we don’t see anything of them when traveling! When we
