MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 227 



I heard a bleat and saw a flash of yellowish-white and the stroke of the 

 right fore leg as the panther felled the goat. No sooner was the goat seized 

 and shaken by the throat than the panther leaped to one side and stood 

 facing the machan, looking occasionally at the kill and sometimes up at the 

 maclian. He appeared however to have no suspicion about it. Then he 

 lay down, still facing us. The light was failing very rapidly, and I could now 

 no longer see any sign of the foresight. The brute remained ten minutes as 

 he was, then got up and, walking slowly round the kill, lay down alongside of 

 it and began sucking the blood. I put some phosphorus on the foresight, 

 took a steady aim at the ground-line, and fired. Up sprang the panther and, 

 leaping sideways, stood broadside on some five paces farther off. I gave him 

 the second barrel, still aiming at the ground-line. To my surprise he turned 

 slowly round, and walked quietly up the hill-side. I thought from the way 

 he carried his head close to the ground that he was badly hit and was about 

 to vomit ; however, it turned out that he was untouched. I waited half an 

 hour and was on the point of telling Ookha to whistle up the other men 

 when he touched my arm and whispered, "Saheb, there is some animal breath- 

 ing heavily underneath the machan!" I listened and heard a footfall or two ; 

 then all was silent for a further live minutes, when we distinctly heard the 

 crunching of bones. I could see a shadowy form of sorts, and it was 

 apparently standing broadside on, so I fired ; there was absolutely no movement, 

 only a temporary cessation of the crunching noise, which was almost 

 immediately resumed ; so I fired shot No, 4, this time aiming at the 

 shadowy object and not at the ground-line, A short roar and away he gal- 

 loped to our left. He went some ten paces, breathing hard and groaning, and 

 fell among a lot of dry teak leaves. He got up again, went some way, and 

 fell again ; then we heard no more. I gave him half an hour's time, and 

 then whistled up the other men. They lit several large fires, and at 8'45 p.m. 

 punctually, or one hour and fifteen minutes after firing the first shot, I 

 descended from the machan. We then went to camp. At sunrise on the 

 20th we went to see the result of the previous nighfs work. To my delight 

 we found the panther — a heavy, old male with forepaws as large as a tigress, 

 lying dead some eight yards to the left of the machan. But had he fallen 

 there? Not a bit of it. He had travelled at least a hundred yards further; 

 but during the night, a hyajna, following up the blood trail, had found 

 the corpse and dragged it back into the open. This brute, who one 

 would have thought would not have dared go near the carcase of a beast 

 of prey, had devoured the testes and viscera and torn a large piece of the 

 skin off the back. I cannot conceive what made the panther return to 

 the kill, for he was uncommonly fat and well-fed, and had lately killed 

 several calves and goats besides three ponies. Luckily he could not have 

 seen the flash of the rifle ; and the reverberation of the reports must have 

 put him o£E the right direction of the sound, else he would have had us out 



