TIGERLAND 



Now, as the prospect of getting out and looking for the 

 tiger with a match did not appeal to me, especially as, for 

 all I knew, it might still be alive, I fired off both barrels of 

 my rifle in quick succession, and, taking advantage of the 

 lull that this produced, shouted again. At length, after 

 what appeared to me an interminable time, a large body 

 of villagers, carrying torches and armed with spears, 

 approached, when, to my intense delight, I saw the tiger 

 lying dead close to the spot where I had heard it fall. 

 My bullet, I found, had Centered behind the shoulder an 

 inch to the left of the spine, and made its exit through the 

 chest a mortal wound which ought to have caused death 

 sooner than it did. It was a fine, full-grown male, of more 

 than average size, and heavy withal, for it took ten stalwart 

 rustics to lift and sling it on to a pole. We marched back in 

 triumph to the village with our prize, the villagers fairly yell- 

 ing in their joy, and reviling the dead beast for all the mis- 

 chief it had wrought, in language more forcible than polite. 



I had just had the carcass bestowed in a safe place for 

 skinning the next day, when some of the men who had been 

 loitering behind came running up, and informed me that 

 the tigress had followed her dead mate, and was standing 

 in the middle of the road not one hundred yards away. 

 Delighted at the news, I hurried to the spot, but only to 

 find I was just too late, for the tigress, after standing a few 

 moments, bewildered by the glare of the torches and the 

 frightful uproar that her appearance had created, had dived 

 back into the jungle, which at that particular spot came 

 right up to the road. Next morning, having skinned the 

 tiger and rubbed the skin well over with arsenic paste, I 

 was cutting off some portions of superfluous fat that still 

 remained, when I noticed a man pick up a piece I had 

 thrown aside, and put it in his cloth. Curious to know 

 what he was going to do with it, I asked him, and he 

 informed me that his child was ill, and tiger fat being con- 

 sidered a most potent medicine, he was going to administer 

 it internally. Needless to say, I deprived him of the " drug " 

 at once, explaining why the tiger, though now dead, was 

 dangerous still. That night, and for two nights following, 

 cows were again tied up, but no more were killed. The tigress 

 had evidently moved off, probably to seek another mate. 

 242 



