156 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



to move at all I liad to push my way through- 

 ticklish work when you don't know how close such a 

 treacherous animal is in front. But in the excite- 

 ment of the moment, one does not pause to calculate 

 pros and cons., but does all he knows to recover the 

 quarry. None of the Burmese had folio wed me. I soon 

 lost all sounds of their voices or beating, and I went 

 on. Every now and then, as a peacock or jungle 

 fowl would get up with a whirr, my heart would be in 

 my mouth, and the gun at the shoulder, thinking it 

 was the tiger springing upon me. But on I went, 

 following the trail and getting well smeared with the 

 blood, for the bushes on both sides of the trail were 

 covered with it. 



After going along the right bank for about a mile, 

 the feline had descended into the nullah by a sloping 

 pathway, caused doubtless by wild animals going to 

 and fro. Now I was safer, as I could see some little 

 distance ahead and around me. It was past 3 P.M. 

 For over an hour I had tracked the tiger, the blood 

 getting less and less, and the country worse, for the 

 nullah narrowed and was more full of boulders and 

 thick thorny bushes. At last I lost all traces ; and 

 there was not very much daylight left ; but I did not 

 like to desist, as I had seen frothy blood on some bushes 

 but a little way past, which is a sure sign of a shot 

 through the lungs, which in the long run always 

 proves fatal. Up to five I continued my search, and 

 as I only knew the way back to the village from the 

 point I had started from, I had thus to retrace my 

 steps by the way I had advanced. When I returned 

 to the place where the blood trail had ceased, I 

 thought I would make one more effort to find the 



