20 DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 



having heard all there was to hear, the news having 

 spread to the village in the mysterious manner it does in 



the East. 



There was still nearly an hour 

 of daylight, so I told him to 

 raise as many men as he could 

 at once, and if enough were forth- 

 coming we would go and see if 

 we could find the three beasts 

 said to have been killed. I had 

 a hasty cup of tea and then set 

 off, all my available staff of 

 servants, save the cook, whom I 

 refused permission to come in 

 deference to my dinner, accom- 

 panying us. 



We must'- have presented an extraordinary and incon- 

 gruous sight as we set forth, and the noise was deafening 

 as none of the men wished to meet the tiger. And to be 

 perfectly truthful I do not think I did myself with that 

 rabble. Sure enough we found three dead cows all struck 

 down within the space of twenty yards. A great argument 

 took place as to whether there had been one or two tigers, 

 and I inclined to the side of the party who maintained that 

 there was a large and a small one — probably a tigress and 

 her part-grown youngster — giving him lessons in the art 

 of how to kill. There was no trace of the tigers now, how- 

 ever, the cattle having effectually frightened them off after 

 the killing had been done, and our noise had probably 

 caused them to leave the locality altogether. I selected a 

 tree and had a machan built at once, as I thought it would 

 be a certainty for me this time. But although I sat up 

 over the kills for two nights and early afternoons into the 

 bargain the tigers never came back, and presumably had 

 to be content with wild game on that occasion. 



I have often thought, however, that had I possessed a little 

 more experience and had we not gone to seek the stricken 

 cows with such a horde that I might have had a soft thing 

 in tigers early in my career. 



I had curious luck altogether with tiger in this district. 

 In another part I sat up at least four times in the same 

 machan, erected in a tree at the junction of a narrow 

 nullah with a broader stream-bed. The locahty was per- 



