292 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



In a couple of hours we had a fine pile of old de- 

 cayed wood and dry brambles collected round each 

 trunk and had them soon alight. The outside of the 

 trunks themselves was old and rotten and blazed 

 away right merrily. Soon we could hear growls and 

 groans and smothered cries ; an attempt too was made 

 by one of the beasts to break through the fire, but 

 the heat drove it back. One got through on to a 

 branch, but a shot brought it down and it fell into 

 the bonfire and was consumed in a few moments. 

 The smoke became dense, the noises in the interior 

 became less and less, and as the fire began to die out, 

 which it did as soon as it reached the solid green 

 portion of the tree, we knew that the horde of man- 

 eaters were no more. We dragged away the debris 

 and found in one tree the remains of two full-grown 

 panthers and three young ones, besides the charred 

 bones of the one that had fallen off the branch. In 

 the other there were, as far as we could judge, four 

 full-grown and four young ones. So we had rid that 

 locality of no less than fifteen panthers, every one of 

 which was either a man-eater or would grow up to 

 become one. The remains of human beings were 

 numerous, for we counted no less than twenty-seven 

 skulls. These we collected and burnt, and then re- 

 turned to the village. Suffice to say that I remained 

 there a week, during which no one was missing. So 

 the people who had migrated, returned to their 

 deserted homes, and I went on to Hingolie, met 

 "Verderer," and had six weeks' sport of a varied 

 kind. 



