THE TIGEE. 303 



Sarju, finding he could not kick him off, paused to think 

 what he would do next. I seized that placid interval 

 to lean over behind and put the muzzle of the rifle to the 

 head of the tiger, blowing it into fifty pieces with the 

 large shell. He dropped like a sack of potatoes ; and then I 

 saw the dastardly mahout urging the elephant to run out of 

 the cover. An application of my gun-stock to his head, 

 however, reversed the engine ; and Sarju, coming round 

 with the utmost willingness, trumpeted a shrill note of 

 defiance, and rushing upon his prostrate foe commenced a 

 war-dance on his body that made it little less difficult to stick 

 to him than when the tiger was being kicked off. It con- 

 sisted I believe of kicking up the carcass with a hind leg, 

 catching it in the hollow of the fore, and so tossing it back- 

 wards and forwards among his feet, winding up by placing 

 his huge fore foot on the body and crossing the other over it, 

 so as to press it into the sand with his whole weight. I found 

 afterwards that the elephant-boy, whose business it is to 

 stand behind the howdah, and, if necessary, keep the elephant 

 straight in a charge by applying a thick stick over his rump, 

 had had a narrow escape in this adventure, having dropped 

 off in his fright almost into the jaws of the tiger. The tiger 

 made straight for the elephant, however, as is almost invari- 

 ably the case, and the boy picked himself up and fled to the 

 protection of the other elephant. 



Sarju was not a perfect shikan elephant ; but his fault was 

 rather too much courage than the reverse, and it was only 

 his miserable opium -eating villain of a mahout that made 

 him turn at the critical moment. He was much cut about 

 the quarters ; but I took him out close to the tents two days 

 after and killed two more tigers without his flinchiDg in the 

 least. The tiger we had thus killed was undoubtedly the 



