CHAPTER XXXI 



I HAD now, after five and twenty years' experience of 

 Indian jungle life, tried every method known and usually 

 employed by Indian sportsmen in the hunting of big game. 

 But I was destined to discover yet another before my shoot- 

 ing days were over. I take no credit for discovering this 

 new method if such I may call it since its discovery was 

 an accident, due rather to necessity than to any efforts of 

 my own. 



The circumstances that led to its adoption were quite 

 simple, though excessively annoying at the time. En- 

 camped on one occasion in the wildest portion of my 

 district, I was interviewed one evening by a deputation 

 headed by the " mundle " of a village about twenty miles 

 from my camp, requesting I would be so good as to come 

 and shoot " some tigers ! " which had been killing their 

 cattle for some weeks. 



This news, specially as to the plurality of the tigers, 

 was very pleasing, that is, from my point of view. Un- 

 fortunately, as it so happened, neither of my two elephants 

 was available at the moment, one being on the sick list and 

 the other employed on important official business many 

 miles away. Yet I felt that should the information be 

 correct, it was obviously necessary that some steps should 

 be taken at once. My first business, therefore, was to test 

 the men's statements by an inquiry on the spot a suggestion 

 which I was glad to find received with unanimous approval, 

 the headman offering to place a new empty hut in the village 

 at my disposal for the night, thus relieving me of the neces- 

 sity of sending out a tent. Accordingly, despatching a 

 servant with bedding, pots and pans, etc., in a bullock 

 cart overnight, also a pony to be left half-way, I started 

 the next morning, wondering as I rode along how I could 

 best accomplish the destruction of these tigers for I had 



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