THE TIGEli. 289 



midday the little band of cowherds and .shik;Lris who 

 accompanied me had most of their wardrobes l)ound 

 round their heads to keep off the sun ; and I looked for 

 a tussle with such a heavy old tiger, long accustomed to 

 drive off the people he met, if we found him well-gorged 

 on such a grilling day as this. We took the track down 

 fully five miles till it entered a long narrow ravine with 

 pools of water at the bottom, and shaded over with a 

 thick cover of trees and bushes. We could not iro into 

 so narrow a place to beat him out with an elephant ; and 

 after much deliberation we decided to leave a pad 

 elephant at the head of the ravine, and post the people 

 we had with us on the trees round about to mark, while 

 I went down to the other end and quietly stalked along 

 the top of the bank on the chance of finding him asleep 

 below. There never was such a beautiful retreat for a 

 tiger, I think. In many places I could not see through 

 the dense shade at the bottom, and several times had to 

 fling down stones to assure myself whether some 

 indistinct flickering object were the tiger or not. I was 

 proceediog quietly along, probing the ravine in this 

 fashion, when the pad elephant we had left at the 

 further end gave one of those tremendous screams that 

 an untrained elephant sometimes emits when suddenly 

 put in pain. She had stumbled over a stone when 

 swinging about in their impatient fashion. There was 

 little chance of findins; the tigjer undisturbed after this, 

 and I had only to stand and watch for a chance of his 

 coming down the ravine or being seen by the scouts on 

 the trees. The first intimation I had of his presence 

 was from a couple of peafowl that scuttled out of a 

 little ravine on the opposite side ; and then I saw the 

 tiger picking his way stealthily up the face of a 



