vn MY FIRST TIGER 75 



shoulder blade. He broke away a second time, 

 but presently we caught sight of him lying down 

 before he was sufficiently alarmed to break again. 

 We crouched down, and then gradually stole 

 towards the quarry until within easy shot. For 

 a few moments I could not help watching and 

 admiring his fine head, but it was a sad sight 

 too, for he was sorely stricken, as shown by the 

 way he drooped his head, only to raise it again, 

 as if fighting against the faintness that was over- 

 taking him. To put him at once out of his pain 

 I took careful aim for his neck and fired, and his 

 head fell to rise no more. With such a head my 

 forced return to the estate was softened con- 

 siderably. Perhaps, too, it was all for the best, 

 as a few days later I was taken with most 

 appalling ague, and one morning found I had 

 got "blackwater," which is most rare in India, 

 only following a long attack of fever. It was so 

 in my case, as, contracting fever in May of 1890, 

 I had had it off and on ever since, and had taken 

 no quinine to stop its inroads on my constitution. 

 How I rode thirty miles, travelled another forty 

 in a jutka to catch the train for Bangalore, 

 reaching there the following evening, remains a 

 mystery, as after seeing the doctor I fainted dead 

 away and hovered between life and death for 

 several days, so that I was packed off to the 

 Madras hospital under the care of a nurse. There 

 I promptly began to pick up and left the hospital 

 towards the end of March, so saturated with 

 quinine that reading was impossible, the letters 

 only showing as a blur. 



On the 27th of December I brought my first 



