THE TIGER. 299 



able to the people, aiicl lazy as a pampered lap-dog ; with 

 just enough knowledge of his work, gained in his early 

 days by carrying the water-bottle of some real sports- 

 man, to concoct a plausible but utterly fictitious story 

 at every place he comes to ; and convicted at every turn 

 of lying, stealing, and every deadly sin ; — yet possibly 

 the admiration of a gullible master, on whom a portion 

 of the glory of his whiskers and tall talk is reflected, as he 

 struts about his house in cantonments in full war-paint, 

 snapping the locks of his brand-new sixty-guinea rifles. 



How the tigjer marked down in the morninfr is to be 

 hunted and killed at midday, when all life in the forest 

 is still beneath the scorchino^ heat of the sun, and the 

 brute himself is least on his o-uard and most unwilling 

 to move, will have been seen from previous descriptions. 

 To read the hunting of one tiger is like that of every 

 other ; but a difierent set of incidents marks each day's 

 sport in the memory of the hunter, who pictures 

 vividly the death of each long after the incidents of 

 his sport w^ith every other sort of game have faded away. 

 The main features are the careful preliminary arrange- 

 ments, the settling the direction of approach so as to cut 

 off all roads of escape to inaccessible fastnesses, the 

 posting of scouts to notify the possible retreat of 

 the tiger, and the cautious, silent approach, the excite- 

 ment gathering as the innermost recess of the cover, 

 where the brute is expected to lie, is approached by the 

 wonderfully intelligent and half-human elephant. 



A strange affection springs up between the hunter 

 and his well-tried ally in the chase of the tiger ; and a 

 creature seeming to those who see him only in the 

 menagerie, or labouring under a load of baggage, but a 

 lumbering mass of flesh, becomes to him almost a seconi 

 self, yielding to his service the perfection of physical 



