Definition of "plowter"

As I did not want to plowter about any more in the drizzle and the dark, I put my waterproof over the muzzle of one gun, and made a sort of wigwam with two or three rammers that I found, and lay along the tail of another gun, wondering where Vixen had got to, and where I might be.

1894 May, Rudyard Kipling, “Servants of the Queen”, in The Jungle Book, London, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published June 1894, page 187