A MAN WOUNDED. 345 



volunteered to show me the brute. He parted the screen of green leaves of 

 a thicket a little way in advance and peered in. I could see nothing, 

 anxiously though I strained my eyes. My companion begged me to accom- 

 pany him nearer, and we crept into the thicket in a stooping posture, till 

 I caught sight of the panther lying among some roots and dry briers. I 

 delayed for a moment to enable me to see exactly how he lay, as it was 

 desirable to put him liors de conibat at the first shot ; but the checkered 

 sunlight and quivering shadows of the boughs matched so closely with 

 his spotted hide that this was no easy matter. Just as I was going to 

 fire he sprang up with a loud " wough, wough," and after a short rush in 

 our direction, to intimidate us, suddenly changed his course, and was out of 

 sight before I could pull trigger. 



I now more than ever regretted having left my original post, and made 

 the best of my way back to it. Here I found the nets lying in disorder on 

 the ground, but the panther had, a marker informed me, retreated to the cover 

 after struggling a few minutes in the toils. We now decided that I should 

 take post a short distance to the right, considering it unlikely that the brute 

 would again break cover at the same place ; and the drive began again. In 

 a very few minutes I was startled by screams and shouts, and then all was 

 still. I feared some accident had occurred, and one of the men was brought 

 to me rather severely bitten in the upper part of his left arm. It appeared 

 that he had been separated from his companions, and that the panther had 

 sprung upon him as he was entering a thicket and had inflicted the injury. 

 Other men being near, the brute left him. I handed him over to the care 

 of one of my peons, who had had some instruction as a dresser in the Mysore 

 hospital ; and having instructed the men, who were really plucky fellows 

 and nothing daunted by this mishap, but rather inspired w^itli a determina- 

 tion to have the panther killed, to keep in compact parties and to carry 

 lighted bundles of dry date-fronds in their hands, the beat recommenced. 



A shout behind me now caused me to run towards the line of nets, 

 which I saw falling in all directions, and I found that the panther, with 

 the peculiar crassness often exhibited by wild beasts, had made his way out 

 of the cover at the same place as before, had knocked down the nets in his 

 rush, and was now well on his way towards the Kul Bhavi ravine ! 



We were soon all together, and after seeing the wounded man's arm 

 washed and bound up, and having despatched him in my trap to Mysore, 

 twelve miles distant, we proceeded to the ravine where the markers in- 

 formed us the panther had taken shelter. They were able to tell to within 

 a few yards where he lay, so surrounding the place with the nets in a circle 

 of about a hundred yards diameter, we threw stones and lighted sticks in, 



