PANTHER SHOOTING 



the kid had been, and I inferred that this must 

 be a mixture of panther and kid, so putting up 

 my rifle whose sights were quite invisible, I fired. 

 At the shot, the panther rushed off in a great 

 fright, and after the men had come up with torches 

 and a ladder, and I had descended from my post, 

 I found that the kid had been nearly cut in half 

 by the hollow express bullet, which had struck 

 it only a few inches from the fang marks in its 

 throat. 



Some time afterwards, when I was in the same 

 neighbourhood, the villagers told me that they had 

 found blood-stained places where the panther had 

 lain down, so that the latter appears after all to 

 have got some of the splash of the bullet after 

 it had broken up in the kid. It was certainly a 

 narrow shave for the robber, but had not my rifle 

 fitted me perfectly, I could not, in the pitchy 

 darkness, have placed the bullet anywhere near him. 



As an instance of the almost sublime imperti- 

 nence often displayed by panthers, I will relate 

 the doings of a pair which committed much havoc 

 in and around the large town of Mysore. 



During my absence from the station, a donkey 

 was killed within a few yards of a sentry-box just 

 outside the wall of the gaol. One of the residents, 

 accompanied by a sporting parson who had come 

 out to India to see the country, and for a change, 

 and who was staying with his brother-in-law (the 

 then civil surgeon of Mysore) sat on the gaol 

 wall in the evening and watched. The panther 

 -came to the kill and was fired at, but missed. 



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