56 DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SHIKAR 



and ran back to me with a broad grin on his face, 

 saying, " There's the bagh " : and he pointed 

 out a striped back just at the place where Gopal 

 said he had fallen at the top of the nullah bank. 

 He was lying down eighty or a hundred yards 

 distant. 



I fired and he rolled over, but came back again 

 to his first position, when I shot again. He tried to 

 get up, and I saw a big head raised, with the mouth, 

 a great red mouth, very wide open. I managed to 

 get a bullet into his head, which rolled him over, 

 below the bank. We went rather wide of him, 

 crossed the nullah and came up from the far side. 

 Yellapa did not wait a single minute to make sure 

 that he was dead : he rushed up and pulled him by 

 the tail. 



It was a good tigress, but with a very short tail, 

 and measured 8 ft. 8 in. and was enormously fat. 

 The first shot had gone into her chest and lungs. 

 Then with joy and shoutings she was carried home 

 on the ladder. 



Just before I had to leave these jungles a chital 

 stag came tearing across a field in front of my tent, 

 and dropped down a very steep-sided dry nullah, 

 with a crash. As he did not appear again " Bumps 

 Raja/ 1 as they call him, and I rushed up to see 

 what had happened. The chital had fallen fifteen 

 feet or more, had not broken a leg, as I had rather 

 expected, and was running about in an aimless way 

 at the bottom of this deep nullah, seeming rather 

 dazed and unable to make his way out. He looked 

 anxiously at Bumps, who was ready to go in at 



