290 WILD SPORTS OF BURMA AND ASSAM 



Moung Bya, breathing his last. It was a ghastly sight, and 

 one which will never be effaced from my memory. We were 

 not sure at first where the bullet had taken effect, as there 

 was only a little clotted blood on the head, and at first we 

 were buoyed up with the hope that it might perhaps, after 

 all, only have been a graze. But it was not, as we found, on 

 examining the head carefully under lamp-light, that the 

 bullet had entered the left temple and passed out at the top 

 of the head, the brain protruding. It was a dreary wait till 

 daylight, and I do not remember ever having spent such a 

 miserable night ; all sorts of fancies and fears of trouble to 

 come chased one another through my mind in rapid succession. 

 We were unable to come to any satisfactory conclusion as 

 to how the unfortunate Karen had managed to find his way 

 alongside the foot of the platform, and as to whether my first 

 or second bullet had killed him, but we could only presume 

 that on hearing the outcry he had started up from his couch, 

 rifle in hand, and rushed across to protect us from danger 

 at the moment perhaps of my pulling the trigger. The 

 unfortunate man did not utter a sound when shot, the bullet 

 passing through the brain. 



There was nothing to indicate on the other hand that I had 

 in any way lost my head ; my intention, as already stated in 

 firing the shots, being to startle the tiger, so that it would drop 

 its prey. As it happened in this case, however, it turned out 

 that no one had been carried off and that it was a false alarm, 

 caused by my dog Jumbo, which, after biting through the 

 rope which secured him to the platform at my head, had 

 trotted away towards the cooking-place in search of bones. 

 Our men were sleeping scattered about on the ground amongst 

 the bushes, and Jumbo, whilst sniffing about for bones, had 

 jumped over a prostrate Burman who woke with a start, and 

 on hearing an animal trotting about amongst the bushes and 

 dry leaves close to him, immediately took it for the tiger, and 

 shouted out an alarm at the top of his voice, the whole camp 

 joining in with a vengeance. The alarm was very realistic, 

 and under the circumstances I was perfectly justified in firing 

 as I did, knowing that there was no one sleeping anywhere in 

 front at our feet. The Karen to be hit must, after running 



