The Tiger 231 



shot, and the tiger had come out slowly just in front of 

 him. ... At all events, the tiger was gone, and I and 

 my friend had to do our best to find him. The elephant 

 Bahadur Guj was called up, and I and my companion stood 

 up in front of the howdah, while the native who had first 

 fired at the animal occupied a back seat with his little 

 son. 



"For a long time our search was fruitless. We 

 worked up to the head of the jungle without finding a 

 vestige of the enemy. On our way back my coadjutor 

 pointed to a thick corinda bush and said, ' That is a likely 

 spot.' I looked, and there was the tiger, or rather tigress, 

 standing in the centre of it. We fired together. There 

 was a roar, a scuffle, and a dense cloud of smoke, under 

 cover of which the tigress disappeared, having only been 

 seen by the small boy in the back seat. The cover con- 

 sisted entirely of detached bushes, so we felt sure she 

 could not have gone far. At last we discovered a black 

 hole flush with the ground. This we approached cau- 

 tiously, and on peering down saw the legs of a recumbent 

 tiger. We threw stones in, but the animal never moved ; 

 and on getting a view of her head, my friend put a ball 

 through it. Three of us now got down into the den, and 

 with much difficulty contrived to get the beast out without 

 injuring the skin." 



Looking around once for a wounded tiger in the 

 Nielgherries by night, Major Leveson and his party 

 drove the beast into a patch of jungle, "not more than 

 fifty yards long by twenty wide. Chinneah (the head 

 shikari) threw a couple of lighted rockets into this retreat, 



