5O Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



It was too absurd. The sight was too much for my 

 companions. They dropped forward in a swoon. Even 

 I, too, felt as if icy cold water was being poured down 

 the back of my neck. Demoralised I was certainly 

 getting, I do not think that I could have borne the 

 gruesome sight much longer, when there was a roar, and 

 a brindled mass sprang at something which was invisible 

 to me. Instantaneously a vast speckled body coiled itself 

 round the brindled matter, there was a struggle, 

 bones seemed to be crunched to bits, the tiger gave a 

 feeble roar or two, and then all was still except 

 an occasional convulsive upheaving. In that fearful 

 effort, the corpse had been shifted so that its wide 

 and sightless orbs no longer stared upwards. That 

 alone was a relief. What had occurred I could not 

 conjecture. 1 The men, when they recovered from 

 their faint, still lay prone with their hands over their 

 faces, muttering that we were now as good as dead. 

 'Giving one a slight kick, I asked him what he 

 was afraid of. " The corpse wil] kill us, "he muttered. 

 "Why, you fools," said I, "the dead come not to 

 life again. The woodcutter is dead, and something 

 has killed his destroyer. We shall know all about it 

 in the morning. I am going to sleep ; you had better 

 do so too." 



I knew they were in too great a fright to descend 

 from the machan and seek a village at that time of 

 night, so making myself as comfortable as I could, 

 I turned over on my side and dozed off, giving a 

 convulsive start now and then as I dreamt that the 

 woodcutter was threatening me. But everything has 

 .an end. That long, long night at length terminated, 

 1 There was a good deal of brushwood and debris about. 



