Tiger Shooting. 47 



dead. It was as plucky and cool a thing as I ever 

 saw in my life. 



I once met with a curious adventure and may 

 mention it here. It smacks of the marvellous, but it is 

 nevertheless perfectly true. I had sent my wife and 

 children for a change to Ootacamund. During the 

 monsoon ; the works on the lighthouse, in the construc- 

 tion of which I was then engaged, were in abeyance, 

 and therefore there was no difficulty in obtaining leave. 

 I crossed over from Burma, spent a month or two at 

 Ooty, and then tried for elephants and gaur in the 

 Wynaud Forest, making Coimbatore my headquarters. 

 A fortnight I had been shooting and had had fair 

 sport, killing several gaur, sambur and one elephant, 

 but it was hard work, and I was thinking of return- 

 ing to Ooty, when some Corumbirs, who live in the 

 dense jungles much as the Karens do in Burma, and 

 have but an apology for clothing, appeared one day and 

 reported that a wonderful tusker frequented the forest 

 in their vicinity. Casually they mentioned too that 

 a tiger had lately been killing a good many people. 

 I had still a fortnight remaining of the month I had 

 devoted to sport, so thought that I might just as well 

 try and pick up a good pair of tusks and rid the 

 country of a man-eater. Packing up my goods on 

 bullocks I returned with them. I searched the jungles 

 for five days. The marks of a large elephant were 

 certainly visible, but the animal himself we could 

 never come across. As for the man-eater, there were 

 reports of a " kill " here and a " kill " there, but when 

 I got to the place the replies were indefinite or no- 

 body visible. On the sixth day a man rushed into 

 my camp, and said his daughter had been killed that 



