CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 125 



he tells me of will serve to show how fortune 

 sometimes smiles on the sportsman. He was 

 out one evening after deer, and he thought 

 that he saw a deer of some sort standing 

 in a patch of thick covert. There was the 

 tawny hide and the animal seemed about the 

 right height, when, suddenly, he saw that it 

 was striped. It was only a few yards distant, 

 but he at once fired, aiming as well as he 

 could for the shoulder-blade. Then, backing 

 cautiously from the covert, and never taking 

 his eyes off what was behind it, he slipped 

 in another cartridge and waited. There was 

 neither sound nor movement, and his suspense 

 was not lessened by the fact that he had sent 

 a none too intelligent native for water and, 

 for aught he knew, the man, who was no 

 shikari, might come blundering right on the 

 wounded brute. Fortunately, the native caught 

 sight of him and gathered from his attitude 

 that there was something afoot. The Colonel 

 had noticed, just before he saw the tiger, that 

 there was an open space through the branches 

 and that the covert was of no great extent, so 

 he now made a circle, always with his eyes on 

 the spot where he knew the tiger to be, in 

 order to come up to the spot from the other 

 side, where it was fairly open. What actually 

 had happened, as he realised next moment to 

 his surprise, was that the tiger lay on the 



