THE TIGER. 281 



tiger's. Here and there bleaching skulls and bones 

 show that the whole herd have not always made good 

 their escape. The ambush of dried leaves by the pass 

 down the bank marks, perhaps, an unsuccessful 

 stratagem ; and not seldom the trampled soil and 

 patches of blood and hair, show where a stubborn boar 

 has successfully resisted the attack of a tiger. Bruin 

 alone is tolerably safe from the assault of the tiger ; but 

 he, too, gets out of his way like the rest, and drinks at a 

 dififerent pool. 



The sportsman will not be long under the guidance 

 of the villao-e shikari before he comes on tracks of tio;ers. 

 Where one or more have been living some time in the 

 neighbourhood, footprints of many dates will be found in 

 the sandy bed of almost every nala. The history and 

 habits of the tigers will generally ooze out of the local 

 hunter at the sight of these marks. When the fresh 

 tracks of the previous night are found his impassive 

 features will be lighted into interest, and, as he follows 

 the trail with the end of his gun, his speech will be low 

 and hurried from suppressed excitement. There is 

 little chance, however, of coming on the brute himself 

 at that early hour. He is probably lying somewhere on 

 an elevated place commanding the approaches to his 

 favourite lair, sunning himself in the soft morning 

 light, and watching against the approach of danger, 

 until the growing heat about ten o'clock shall have 

 extinsfuished all sious of movement in the neigjhbour- 

 hood, when he will creep down into some shady nook 

 by the water, and, after a roll in the wet sand, proceed 

 to sleep off the effects of his midnight gorge. Some- 

 times, however, if the sportsman be out early enough, 

 he will find, from the cries of animals, that the ti^er is 



