298 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 



coughing roars, is about as unnerving and dan- 

 gerous an experience as a hunter can have. 



Not every tiger hunt is rewarded with a tiger. 

 Except for my friend, Dr. Smith— and English 

 army officers of India who are out at every report 

 —I know none that has done more actual hunting 

 for tiger within a given period than I— and I have 

 yet to secure my first trophy, though I wounded 

 three, in the course of six months' uninterrupted 

 industry in Sumatra, Malay Peninsula, Siam, 

 lower Burma and India, during which time I sat 

 up over goats and bullocks; watched over a kill 

 from a mechan; waited up a tree for a tiger to 

 break cover in front of beaters, and walked him up. 

 At first it was partly inexperience on my part, 

 and then native ignorance and lack of coopera- 

 tion; lastly it was hollow-pointed bullets, and 

 always it was lack of time; for getting a tiger is 

 after all a question of time and opportunity, other 

 things being equal. You may go out two dozen 

 times, as I did, without carrying home a scalp, or 

 you may score the first time, as has been done from 

 a howdah. 



My first tiger hunt developed from a deer hunt 

 on the coast of the Malay Peninsula, which I 

 joined to please my Mohammedan host, Aboo Din, 

 who had just brought me back from a successful 

 boar shoot he had organized for me with great 



