340 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



bullet. The true sportsman will often spare the 

 beautiful creature, even when thus at the point of his 

 rifle, when a week or two of the easy sport has satiated 

 his ardour, and filled his camp with meat and trophies 

 of graceful antlers. It was impossible in those days to 

 walk half a mile along the river bank without seeing 

 deer, and I have known an indifferent shot kill six 

 bucks here in a morning. 



There was some excitement in the chance of stum- 

 bling on a tiger in the cool thickets of green cover by 

 the river, or, like the sportsman, stalking the spotted 

 deer. I was following a wounded buck once, when I 

 thus almost trod upon a tiger doing the very same thing. 

 It was in the dusk of the evening, when I saw him about 

 twenty paces ahead of me, roading up the bloody trail 

 like a retriever on a winged pheasant. He was passing 

 over a low ridge between two ravines, and I was below 

 him — a situation awkward for a foot-encounter with any 

 dangerous animal. I therefore waited till he disappeared 

 on the other side, and then running softly up, peered 

 down from behind a clump of bamboos. Presently I 

 saw the wounded buck and two does start out of some 

 cover beyond the further ravine, and then a motion of 

 the tiger, who had been standing a little below them, as 

 he quickly crouched out of their sight, revealed him to 

 me. I sat down, and took a steady shot at his shoulder 

 at about seventy yards. He rolled back into the nala, 

 above which I was standing, and, after a good deal of 

 growling and struggling among the leaves, all was still. 

 It would have been folly to go down to him in such 

 uncertain light, so I returned to the boat, going back 

 next morning with an elephant to see the result. It 

 was just as well I had not ventured down in the dark 

 the night before ; for, after lying some time where he 



