I woke last night to hear something sniffing outside the tent. It
scraped and scraped, and I was sure that it was digging a hole and
creeping underneath the canvas. I sat up in bed and in a quavering
voice said "Go away," and the noise stopped, but only to begin
again--scrape, scrape, snuffle, snuffle, in the most eerie way. Then
something worse happened. At my very ear, as it seemed, the most
blood-curdling yell rent the astonished air. It was only a jackal,
Boggley says, but it sounded as if all the forces of evil had been let
loose at once. You can laugh if you like, but I think it was enough to
frighten a very Daniel. As for me, in one moment I was well under the
blankets, with fingers in both ears, and I suppose even in the midst
of my terror I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I knew was
daylight and the cheerful sound of voices. To-night I shall have a
lamp burning and a _chokidar_ (watchman) to sleep outside my tent.
Baratah is quite a large town, and has a Roman Catholic Mission and
two lady doctors. We are camping about a mile from the town in a
corner of Mr. Lister's compound. It is pretty, with well-kept grass
and flower-beds, and opposite is the Guest House of the Raj, where we
would be staying now were it not that its roof is not quite safe, and
it cannot be used. I went through it, and a great neglected place it
is, with tawdry Early Victorian furniture and awful oleographs.
When the sun had gone down yesterday, we went for a walk to explore,
along an avenue of peepul trees, across a fine polo-ground, and then
we lighted on a big tank.
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