THE TIGER. 319 



board I might well have dispensed with. All I could 

 do in the way of holding on barely sufficed to prevent 

 myself and guns from being pitched out ; and it was 

 some time before Sarjii, finding he could not kick him 

 ojBT, paused to think what he would do next. I seized 

 that placid interval to lean over behind and put the 

 muzzle of the rifle to the head of the tiger, blowins: it 

 into fifty pieces with the large shell. He dropped like 

 a sack of potatoes ; and then I saw the dastardly 

 mahout urging the elephant to run out of the cover. 

 An application of my gun-stock to his head, however, 

 reversed the engine ; and Sarjii, coming round with the 

 utmost willingness, trumpeted a shrill note of defiance, 

 and rushing upon his prostrate foe commenced a war- 

 dance on his body, that made it little less difficult to 

 stick to him than when the tiger was beino; kicked ofi". 

 It consisted, I believe, of kicking up the carcase with a 

 hind-leg, catching it in the hollow of the fore, and so 

 tossing it backwards and forwards among his feet, 

 winding up by placing his huge fore-foot on the body 

 and crossing the other over it, so as to press it into the 

 sand with his whole weight. I found afterwards that 

 the elephant-boy, whose business it is to stand behind 

 the howdah, and, if necessary, keep the elephant 

 straight in a charge by applying a thick stick over his 

 rump, had had a narrow escape in this adventure, 

 having dropped off in his fright almost into the jaws 

 of the tiger. The tiger made straight for the elephant, 

 however, as is almost invariably the case, and the boy 

 picked himself up and fled to the protection of the other 

 elephant. 



Sarjii was not a perfect shikari elephant ; but his 

 fault was rather too much courage than the reverse, and 

 it was only his miserable opium-eating villain of a 



