230 DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SHIKAR 



down on the tiger. I saw a shadowy white thing, 

 his face and whiskers, and I think he was looking up 

 at me, but he was off and away before I could pull 

 the trigger and I fired into the grass that he vanished 

 into. I think I missed and we found no blood tracks 

 when the men came, nor could we find the bullet 

 mark in the ground. 



When we got back to camp we found that the 

 useful little pony, Thomas, had disappeared. He 

 was always allowed to graze in the fields, watched 

 over by a small boy who had the charge of him and 

 my calves. The boy had let him graze away into 

 the jungle out of his sight and was afraid, I think, to 

 tell of it at once when he could not find him, so 

 that some little time elapsed before a search was 

 made. Men were sent out in all directions to look 

 for him and he was tracked through the jungle for 

 some miles in the direction of his home forty miles 

 away then all trace was lost. He had a rope 

 round his neck with a long end dragging, and I was 

 much afraid he might get entangled among trees 

 and be starved to death. The police made all 

 inquiries at the neighbouring villages and also at 

 his home, but they could hear nothing of him, and 

 they said it was not possible for him to have been 

 stolen without their getting information. We never 

 heard of the pony again; the shikaris said he must 

 have been killed by a tiger, but I lived in hopes of 

 hearing news of him for a long time. It was a sad, 

 unsatisfactory end to poor Thomas and a great loss 

 to me. The owner wrote to say that the pony 

 had never come back, and he asked for the price of 



