236 WILD MEN AND WILD BEASTS. 



the worm as can be easily drawn out, is daily wound round 

 the cloth till the whole comes away. Should the worm be 

 broken by force or accident, it will recede into the wound, 

 where it dies, causing suppuration and great pain before it 

 is finally got rid of. 



A few miles to the southward of Sehore lies a scrub 

 jungle of some extent. In no part very dense, it contains 

 many small ravines, filled with long grass and thorny bushes, 

 affording good shelter to tigers, which occasionally wander 

 up from the larger coverts, attracted by the cattle from the 

 surrounding villages. Late one afternoon a shikaree whom 

 we had stationed at this spot came in and reported that a 

 villager had just been killed by a tiger. The man with two 

 companions had been gathering gum from the trees, when 

 the tiger rushed out on them from a patch of grass, seizing 

 him in his teeth, and killing him on the spot. His comrades 

 were unarmed, and fled to the village. 



It was too late to do anything that afternoon, but all was 

 prepared for an early start, and by sunrise next morning we 

 had ridden out to the jungle, where we met our gun-bearers 

 with three good elephants. I was accompanied by the civil 

 surgeon and the adjutant of the local corps. As the country 

 was very open, and the sun was still low in the heavens, I 

 urged them not to fire long shots should the tiger rise on the 

 approach of the elephants. I calculated that we should have 

 no difficulty in again marking him down. All preliminaries 

 being arranged, we went off to the spot where the tiger had 

 been seen, and there, face downwards, lay the body of the 

 unfortunate man. His clothes were torn, and a quantity of 

 blood was on the ground ; but the tiger had apparently not 

 been hungry, for no portion of the body was eaten, and as 

 it had lain in the jungle all night, we were not sanguine. 



