DELIGHTED VILLAGERS 



The shots brought up the elephants as previously 

 arranged, but before they arrived upon the scene we had 

 already descended from our perch, and were busy examining 

 and measuring our prize, which proved to be an unusually 

 massive tiger, 9 feet 8 inches from nose to tip of tail. 

 To lift this huge carcass on to a pad elephant, we found 

 no easy task, for it must have weighed near 500 Ibs., 

 However, we managed it at last, and with the great beast 

 half covering the elephant it was tied on, returned in 

 triumph to the village. 



We received quite an ovation from the villagers, to 

 whom the death of the tiger was a matter of vast im- 

 portance, meaning not merely immunity from further loss 

 in cattle, but also release from the terrible apprehension 

 lest the beast should suddenly take to man-eating as 

 sometimes happens when a tiger has hung about a village 

 long enough to lose its fear of human beings. 



This time, although we started later, our journey back 

 through the forest was unattended with adventure, possibly 

 because we were now so large a party. Neither did we 

 tempt Providence again by driving in the dark, preferring 

 the slower but safer mode of transit afforded by the elephant. 

 Consequently, it was late when we reached the tents, 

 but the strange events we had been witnesses to that day 

 had given us so much to think and talk about, that, late 

 as was the hour, we sat up around the camp fire discussing 

 them. 



The extraordinary and almost human intelligence dis- 

 played by the tiger, moreover, had recalled to my friend's 

 mind another, and even more remarkable, incident he 

 had once witnessed, in which the sagacity shown by the 

 animal concerned was so much more extraordinary that 

 but for his having been himself the spectator of the 

 scene, I could hardly have credited the story, which I now 

 repeat. 



It appeared that one afternoon some months before, he 

 was sitting in the verandah of his tent, watching his 

 elephants, which, picketed under some trees about fifty 

 yards distant, were standing in their usual listless attitude, 

 and picking occasionally at the branches in front of them 

 provided for their consumption. Presently from under 



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