286 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 



than the male, or because she is by nature the 

 slyer and more vicious. Certainly she is a fiend 

 incarnate when every second year she gives birth 

 to cubs, usually two, which do not move about with 

 her until six weeks old; and no doubt her dispo- 

 sition is not improved by the necessity of conceal- 

 ing the youngsters from the tiger who else would 

 devour them. 



It is a curious and unexpected development that 

 the cattle killer, turned man-eater, ceases to be 

 indifferent to man's presence and becomes cow- 

 ardly. Yet on occasion it is bold beyond all record 

 of other animals. 



I came to a hamlet in northwestern Bengal, 

 where a journeying ryot (farmer) at the very edge 

 of a settlement, in broad daylight, was bumped off 

 his scared bullock and pounced upon and carried 

 off by a tigress. In the little settlement of Teen 

 Pehan, to the west of the Ganges, I saw a mother 

 whose five-year-old boy had been snatched up in 

 the full noon of day while at play not fifty feet 

 from where she bathed in a nearby stream. In 

 Sumatra I saw the palms and the soles and the 

 distorted face— all that remained of a fourteen- 

 year-old girl who had gone forth in the early morn 

 to collect herbs in the more or less open jungle 

 almost within sight of her father's house on the 

 river. One of my hunting party in lower Burma 



