274 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. 



go into so narrow a place to beat him out with an elephant ; 

 and after much deliberation we decided to leave a pad ele- 

 phant at the head of the ravine, and post the people we had 

 with us on the trees round about to mark, while I went down 

 to the other end and quietly stalked along the top of the 

 bank on the chance of finding him asleep below. There never 

 was such a beautiful retreat for a tiger I think. In many 

 places I could not see through the dense shade at the bottom, 

 and several times had to fling down stones to assure myself 

 whether some indistinct flickering object were the tiger or not. 

 I was proceeding quietly along, probing the ravine in this 

 fashion, when the pad elephant we had left at the further end 

 gave one of those tremendous screams that an untrained 

 elephant sometimes emits when suddenly put in pain. She 

 had stumbled over a stone when swinging about in their im- 

 patient fashion. There was little chance of finding the tiger 

 undisturbed after this, and I had only to stand and watch for 

 a chance of his coming down the ravine or being seen by 

 the scouts on the trees. The first intimation I had of his 

 presence was from a couple of peafowl that scuttled out of a 

 little ravine on the opposite side ; and then I saw the tiger pick- 

 ing his way stealthily up the face of a precipitous bauk, where 

 I could hardly think a goat would have found footing. He 

 was about a hundred and fifty yards from my rifle ; and the first 

 bullet only knocked some earth from the bank below him. 

 "When I fired the other he was just topping the bank, and clung 

 for a second as if he would have come over backwards, but by 

 an effort recovered himself and disappeared over the top. Eun- 

 ning to a higher piece of ground I saw him trotting sullenly 

 across the burnt plain, and looming as large to the eye as a 

 bull buffalo. He certainly looked a very mighty beast ; but 

 he was a craven at heart, or he would never have left such a 



