the sun gets hot, about nine or ten o'clock sees them rising in the sky, circling and wheeling, and calling to each other until they reach so high an altitude that, though the cry can be heard in the clear atmosphere, it is hard to make out the series of dots up in the cloudless blue. When well in the air, they travel off to the next encamping ground that promises safety for the night and the proximity of an evening meal. Not that even the bare sandpits or moist stretches of mud give them the perfect security for which they could wish. Our Hazratabad folk live largely in the water, and they find their way across in the dusk armed with a long rope with a stone at each end, crawl with infinite patience up to the drowsy group, and, either on the ground or at the second of rising, a bird suddenly finds itself wrapped in the toils of the sling. It must be a tedious sport; but patience is a virtue in Hazratabad, and an expert can get several birds in the night. The beautiful feathery plumes of the tail of the grey crane are made up locally into fancy fly-whisks and dusters, though it is hard to obtain one of the simple natural grey. Local taste approves of red and blue dyes of a staring colour.

Apart from the excellence of the feeding - ground, there is another point that improves the Hazratabad crane-shooting which deserves mention. A little to the north the river passes through a rocky ravine, and neither food nor a good

encamping ground exists for a hundred miles and more. March frequently gives a little rain, and some cloudy days are to be expected. If these coincide with the Hazratabad crane season, the prospects of sport are immensely increased. The flights that have had their meal climb high as usual into the sky, but the long march and the gloomy prospect evidently deter them, for they return to the flats of the previous evening. On the other hand, new flights that have come up for a short march only from the south, travel on to pass the night in the same spot, and all come out for a fresh attack on the ensuing morn. If the gloomy days extend to four or five, the sight on the sandhills must be seen to be believed. Not that one is any more likely to get a larger bag on these days. The big flights shift about restlessly, or are made to move on by the few peasants who live in the neighbourhood of the great wastes. Still, hope is a great assistance to sport, and there is always the chance which Vernon and I experienced one day of rounding up a peculiarly greedy and unsuspicious flock, and, with a rake of four barrels and a hurried re-load and snap at the departing flight, making the monstrous bag of eleven Demoiselles to the one stalk. The modus operandi lies in the scientific use of the ugly but useful camel. He is part of the scenery of the desert, and, although the cranes will promptly rise with hoarse screams if they see him in the

riverain, they have but little objection to his presence among the sandhills. Nor does their brain carry them so far as to connect a somewhat larger hump on the back of the camel and two additional legs on the reverse side with the idea of the pair of mounted men over whose heads they passed but shortly.

Our plans were soon concerted with Mian Jamal, and next morning out we turned in the dark.

With the Mian was young Ghulamu, his nephew, who shares his taste for sport, and old Buddhu, a man of the Thal, or high desert, a famous traveller and shikari, full of strange lore of man and beast, and, when judiciously treated, not shy of producing it for the benefit of the sympathetic white man.

We drove the mile to our wayside station and then got on to a trolley and were pushed along for four and a half miles.

"We would have done well to have started ten minutes earlier," I said. "The dawn is breaking rapidly, and the flights will be out before we arrive."

"Good heavens! You are incorrigible," said Vernon. "It is not yet six, and still you are grumbling."

"Well, I would rather be too early than too late any day. One can always go to bed early in this place.'

At the platelayer's hut we found Mian Jamal with the camels. "Look!" I cried, "there "there

they come. in time." "Where?" said Vernon. "Look at that thin line on the horizon, riverwards," I answered. "It looks like nothing but a dark streak from here."

We are only just

Even as we watched, the line came nearer and nearer, increasing in size and developing into separate dots until it turned into a flight of the great birds, screaming and clanging, bent on getting in an early meal.

"Let us get on," said Mian Jamal shortly, as impatient as I was myself. And we mounted the camels.

I was with Mian Jamal, Vernon with the nephew, and old Buddhu by himself, but carrying capacious saddle-bags to hold what we might shoot. Away shuffled the camels with a curious soft pad - padding. Before us flitted a Red-Backed Shrike.

"Praised be God!" said old Buddhu. "We shall have good luck. That bird, seen at the beginning of the day, always brings it."

Next, we saw four men in the distance making for the river.

"Those fellows are up to no good, I fancy," said Mian Jamal. "That is not the road to anywhere."

"Perhaps," said I, "they are going to do silt-clearance in the Kachi (riverain)."

"I hardly think the time has quite come for that yet," said Jamal.

However, we thought no more of the mysterious little

"Look," he said, "at those brothers-in-law" (relations by marriage are no better liked in India than at home, and their various names are in themselves terms of opprobrium). "How they swarm like locusts over the fields."

(They were the only living objects besides ourselves and the cranes for miles round; but Buddhu has a fine turn for hyperbole.) "We shall not get a shot."

He was right: the countrymen put up our cranes before we could stop them. Buddhu subsequently addressed the poor men in a few biting words, to which they replied in much humility and astonishment that they had not seen us and meant no harm.

"Ah, well," said old Buddhu to us, a little mollified at the soft answer, "those were not birds of good intentions, you could see that."

There were, however, many more flocks where the first came from. Again we heard the welcome clamour, and, pulling up our camels to a standstill, we waited to see what direction the flight would take. These birds were as obliging as old Buddhu could wish, and went down in a field not half a

He had the best chance, naturally, and was able to make both barrels tell. I had my two shots, and was just feeling disappointed that the distance had been too great, when one bird came a sudden purler.

We tied up the game, looking, with appreciation, over the gallant birds, with their bare red foreheads and crowns, grey plumage, and beautiful tailfeathers.

Presently we saw a company of horsemen in the distance. They appeared to be keeping to a line, but two detached themselves from it and came straight at us. I recognised them from a distance, for I had often seen the red-bearded Ressaldar of Uttera, Ali Mahommed Khan, and his smart Jemadar nephew. The old man had been in Cureton's Mooltanis, and the younger in Jacob's Horse.

Uttera was a village of graziers in the middle of the Thal, fourteen miles from the railway. Like Ithaca, the desert is, if inhospitable, a great

nurse of heroes. There is no cultivation except, in good years, a few patches of pulse among the sandhills, but the men are of magnificent physique. If there is fierce heat in the summer the nights of the desert are cool, and, by reason of the exceeding dryness, malaria is unknown.

There are many such villages in the desert, but this particular one was the home and breedingground of fighting men. In the Punjab most men are potential soldiers, and the Indian Army only uses a tithe of its available material. Thus it happens that those places which took a good hold upon the service in the early days stick to their lead, and only suffer the presence of outsiders when they have no young men of their own to provide for. It just so happened that when Cureton was raising his famous corps, Ahmed Khan, father of our red-bearded old friend, had joined him with a dozen other young fellows. There were plenty of casualties in those days, and Ahmed Khan soon rose in rank and esteem. Others of his clan came swarming in to this and the sister corps, and their sons and their sons' sons followed on after them.

the cavalry branch, and had started the tradition that the dismounted branch was a thing to be scorned. They left that in our district to the Sagri Pathans, dwellers midst bare rocks and barren glens, who crowd into the army, not as one village, but as a whole tribe spread over three districts. They, too, were among the early birds, and were thus connected with the more famous infantry corps, Cokes' Rifles, the Johnston-ka-Paltan (56th Punjabis), and the like.

The Ressaldar and his nephew salaamed as they approached.

"What is up, Ressaldar Sahib?" I asked, "to bring you fourteen miles across the Thal from your own village at this hour?"

"Some ruffians burgled Duffadar Lal Khan's house," replied the old man. "Fortunately one of the family noticed the loss about 3 A.M., and we have been tracking with lanterns ever since."

"Why," said Vernon, "they must have been the four we saw as we reached here. Were they four?"

"Yes," replied the Ressaldar. "Two with bare feet tied up in rags, one with Kohati sandals, and one with local shoes, with a scratch at the heel of the left one. One of the barefooted men is slightly lame. So much the sand has told us."

"We are desert folk ourselves," he said, "and I noticed the exact line. People don't move in the Thal quite so early as a rule. We need not stop at the railway. I can show the place a mile farther east where they dropped into the riverain."

"Come!" said Vernon to me. "Let us chuck the crane and take the cracksmen. We can have crane any other day; besides, we have got three as it is."

"All right,” I said. "We shall probably bag our men because there is, luckily, that big belt of sandhills before we get to the first creek. If we get a view by then it will be all right, otherwise our burglars I will swim for it and we shall lose them."

We were shuffling along after the main party as we talked, and were soon up with them. The tracks in the sand of the Thal were very clear. We did not stick to them, however, but trusted to Mian Jamal to put us on two full miles ahead, leaving a pensioned Duffadar and a young soldier home on leave behind on the tracks to make certain. The Jemadar's pony was saddled with an is-pàt, the local word for an English saddle, probably derived from our "sporting saddle," and Vernon was glad to get on to it. He had not become so accustomed to the long days in the desert as I had, and camel riding is an acquired art.

"They passed that acaciatree to the right in line with that very big withered akk bush," said Jamal.

"Why," said I, "we hardly glanced at them."

"Ah, but we cattle-owners get in the habit of noticing these things and of taking lines," said the Mian. "Grazing is sparse in the Thal; we can't keep up with every animal, but we don't want them lifted if we can help it." By the acacia-tree we struck the trail.

"Do you see?" said a smart reservist, "they got nervous at seeing the sahibs, and removed the foot-wrappings. Our old Bashka will know these feet

again among a thousand." Old Bashka was riding postillion behind another sowar, and immediately began to take notes.

"Never mind covering them here," he said. "It will take too long. Let us get on after the men themselves."

The first part of the Kachi, which we had reached by this time, was hard and covered with grass and a little thornbush. Tracking was slow, but we were numerous and worked by fast casts made at a trot, though the two old men, Bashka and Buddhu, stuck to the linemen throughout, joining up on a cry from ahead.

"Are, Piruà, Piruà, Piru-à-àà Hoy!" yelled Jamal to a man half a mile or so forward. Piru came across to join us.

He placed his hands on the Mian's foot and knee to gain virtue from him.

"Did you see pass?" said Jamal.

four men

"No," said Piru, "but Mitha, Bhamb, is about in these parts. He was with Allu last night.