172 Wild Beasts 



" The panther will charge an elephant with the greatest 

 ferocity. In 1863, near Jubbulpur, a party of us were 

 beating a bamboo cover for pigs, with a view to the stick- 

 ing thereof (that is to say, riding them down and spearing 

 them from the saddle) ; my elephant was with the beaters, 

 when a shout from the latter announced that they had 

 stumbled on a panther. They took to trees, and I got on 

 the elephant to turn him out, while the rest exchanged 

 their hog spears for rifles and surrounded the place. 

 She got up before me, bounding away over the low 

 bamboos, and I struck her on the rump with a light 

 breech-loading gun as she disappeared. Several shots 

 from the trees failed to stop her, and she took refuge in a 

 very dense, thorny cover on the banks of a little stream. 

 Twice I passed up and down without seeing the brute, but 

 fired once into a log of wood in mistake for her, and was 

 going along the top of the cover for the third time, when 

 the elephant pointed down the bank with her extended 

 trunk. We threw some stones in, but nothing moved, and 

 at last a peon came up with a huge stone on his head, 

 which he heaved down the bank. Next moment a yellow 

 streak shot from the bushes, and levelling the adventurous 

 peon, like a flash of lightning came at my elephant's head, 

 but just at the last spring, I broke her back with the 

 breech-loader, and she fell under the elephant's trunk, 

 tearing at the earth and stones and her own body in her 

 bloody rage. 



"The method usually resorted to by old Bamanjee and 

 other native shikaris for killing panthers and leopards, 

 was by tying out a kid, with a line attached to a fish-hook 



