IN THE BERARS— MY FIRST TIGER ^l 



had the}^ disappeared when a Winding shower came on, 

 and for the time being jungle and buffalo were hidden 

 from me. The squall was accompanied by a gusty wind, 

 which necessitated frantic clutches at the nearest branch 

 to prevent myself being blown down the khud below. 



The time crawled on with leaden wings. The weather 

 appeared to get worse and I grew weary of abusing myself 

 for my folly at having come out on such an afternoon. The 

 buffalo carcase, on which my eyes had been fixed so 

 intently and for so long, began to assume fantastic shapes 

 to my dazed vision and to lift the legs I had thought so stiff 

 and stark. 



Suddenly, from absolute lethargy and inertness, my body 

 assumed a tense rigidity, the tension of the muscles being 

 almost painful, so tightly were they 

 braced. Without a sound, without the 

 movement of a branch or crackling of 

 a twig, a fine tiger stepped out into 

 the small clearing round the buffalo 

 with all the lightness and grace of a 

 kitten, carrying its head held high in 

 regal fashion. One lordly glance up the 

 track by which the carcase had been 

 dragged down was all he vouchsafed, 

 and then stepping half round the buffalo 

 he picked it up in his powerful jaws as 

 easily as a kitten would pick up a ball, 

 of yarn, carried it just out of the clearing into the jungle 

 alongside, and squatting down — I could guess this — began 

 to crunch up the carcase. To describe my own feehngs 

 were impossible. From the seventh heaven of hope and 

 delightful anticipation of bagging my first tiger I was 

 reduced in a moment to the black depths of despair. 



Do you understand what had happened ? The space cut 

 round the dead buffalo was only just sufficient to enable 

 me to see it clearly, and I had understood that the carcase 

 had been tied down to stakes in the ground. It had not 

 been so pegged, and the tiger by moving it out of the 

 clearing had taken it and himself out of my range of vision. 

 I turned round to the man with me, and in frantic panto- 

 mime asked him what was to be done. He was shaking like 

 a leaf with excitement or something else. Nothing was to 

 be got out of him ? I turned my eyes back to the clearing. 



