336 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



but as " prevention is better than cure/ 1 it may be useful to 

 consider some points which may aid the foot shikari to 

 obviate as much as possible the necessity of "following 

 up " at all. 



Enough has previously been said in order to endeavour 

 to dissuade the inexperienced sportsman from placing him- 

 self at the mercy of a wild beast without sufficient reason 

 but there is one point that might perhaps be touched on, 

 and that is that some men appear to have an idea that a 

 beast like a panther may, under favourable circumstances, 

 be grappled with by a man using his hands alone, without 

 serious result ! How such extraordinary ideas can have 

 got abroad is inconceivable. Let anyone try to lift up and 

 carry for some distance a freshly killed panther even of 

 small size say 6J feet and, after fully realising the 

 weight and slipperiness of the inert mass, let him imagine 

 that mass full of all the life and vigour of its cat-like 

 nature, and, every claw and fang bared, flying through the 

 air with an energy inspired of furious rage. Then, if 

 possible, let him be aware of the extraordinary rapidity 

 with which all the cats inflict wounds, and he will be sur- 

 prisingly dense if he cannot then realise what it means to 

 wrestle with such a brute. That some cases have occurred 

 in which powerful men have stood up under a very small 

 panther's attack is, I think, true ; but in the vast majority 

 of cases a man is instantly knocked down and the mischief 

 done before he can quite gather what has happened. The 

 brute may then leave him, or be driven off, but since the 

 true danger of wounds inflicted by the big cats lies in the 

 septic poisoning set up in them, this is not much con- 

 solation. 



It is with much diffidence that one turns now to the 

 question of how to avoid, as much as possible, having to 

 " follow up " these animals when wounded, and therefore 

 much more likely to attack their pursuer. It is so easy to 

 " make marks on a piece of paper," as the Bhil said to the 



