A REAL TIGER STORY 



237 



exhaustion. To be played battledore and shuttlecock with 

 in a hard-sided howdaJi, with the thermometer over 100 

 degrees in the shade, and that immediately after being 

 charged twice by two different tigers, was an experience it 

 is not given to many to go through. With difficulty I 

 retrieved the rifles and put one of them to safety. Why 

 that rifle had not gone off when it had been tossed about at 

 full cock in the howdah is one of the mysteries I shall never 

 be able to solve. 



" As soon as I was capable of understanding anything, 

 and that was not until I had had a long and exceedingly 

 nasty hot drink — for it was before the days of the thermos 

 bottle — I heard from my friend, who had come up, that 

 two tigers had been found dead in addition to the mass of 

 pulp which was all that the tusker had left of the tigress. 

 An examination of the second tiger I had fired at, and 

 which I had thought at the time had dropped in the grass 

 to my second shot, showed it to be the fine big male, and 

 this solved the riddle. As he dropped, the tigress, who 

 must have been just behind him in the grass on the far side 

 of the ravine, maddened at his death and at finding her 

 retreat barred, came out bald-headed at us, and very 

 nearly had her revenge for the loss of husband and son. 

 They all came out at the same place, and were evidently 

 using a well-known and familiar line of retreat to the 

 hills. 



" But for aU that, it was the most wonderful piece of 

 luck man has ever had, to have them all three at once and 

 to get them all charging. 



" The congratulations I received were hearty and sincere, 

 as you may guess, and the skins of those two tigers, with the 

 tail of the tigress, are amongst my most treasured sporting 

 trophies." 



