THE HIGHER NAEBADA. 323 



along the little nala, which Ted into the top of the ravine, and 

 re-enter the latter. I then went and placed myself so as to 

 command the top of the ravine, and sent people below to fling 

 in stones ; and presently the panther broke again at the same 

 place, this time galloping away openly across the plain. I 

 missed with both barrels of my rifle, but turned him over 

 with a lucky shot from a smooth-bore, at more than two 

 hundred yards. I then went up to him on the elephant, and 

 he made feeble attempts to rise and come at me, but he was 

 too far gone to succeed. The panther will charge an elephant 

 with the greatest ferocity. In 1863, near Sambalpiir, a party 

 of us were beating a bamboo cover for pigs, with a view to 

 the sticking thereof, my elephant accompanying the beaters, 

 when a shout from the latter announced that they had 

 stumbled on a panther. They took to trees, and I got on 

 the elephant to turn him out, while the others exchanged 

 their hog-spears for rifles, and surrounded the place on trees. 

 She got up before me, bounding away over the low bamboos, 

 and I struck her on the rump with a light breech-loading gun 

 as she disappeared. Several shots from the trees failed to 

 stop her, and she took refuge in a very dense thorny cover on 

 the banks of a little stream. Twice up and down I passed 

 without seeing the brute, but firing once into a log of wood 

 in mistake for her, and was going along the top of the cover 

 for the third time, when the elephant pointed down the bank 

 with her extended trunk. We threw some stones in, but 

 nothing moved, and at last a peon came up with a huge stone 

 on his head, which he heaved down the bank. Next moment 

 a yellow streak shot from the bushes, and, levelling the ad- 

 venturous peon, like a flash of lightning came straight at my 

 elephant's head, when just at the last spring I broke her back 

 with the breech-loader, and she fell over under the elephant's 



Y 2 



