48 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



morning at daybreak, and if I would come at once 

 they would beat for the beast, and that people 

 had surrounded it. I hurried there, but the corpse 

 had been removed and was being cremated. Also 

 the circle formed round the man-eater had been so 

 defective that he or she had got away. I was very 

 angry, and swore they might all be decimated before 

 I trudged a mile to save them. These people are 

 very superstitious, and believe that if the body of a 

 person killed by a tiger is not recovered and burnt, 

 the defunct will arise and destroy all its relatives who 

 have failed to give it the rights of burial, which in 

 most cases means being burnt. I then removed my 

 camp further inland about ten miles, searching for 

 the tusker daily without getting a sight of him. 

 Hearing of a human being being killed here and there, 

 notwithstanding what I had stated, I did go frequently 

 to try and get a shot at the homicide, but it was all 

 in vain ; the people would not leave the victims, but 

 drove the tiger off before I could get to the scene of the 

 tragedies. On the eleventh day I came upon fresher 

 marks than usual of the tusker, and was following 

 them up, accompanied by my shikarie, a local man, 

 and a Karumba. We were far from the haunts of man, 

 and all was solitude, when there was heard a piercing 

 cry, which was unmistakably the death shriek of some 

 miserable creature struck down by a beast of prey. 

 I rushed forward, followed most reluctantly by my 

 two attendants, and found a poor wood-cutter. He 

 was a small, wiry, man probably about forty years of 

 age, all but naked, and the breath was scarcely out of 

 his body. As I stooped over him to ascertain whether 

 there was the least hope of his recovery, I found that 



