242 WILD MEN AND WILD BEASTS. 



citement had magnified into the nobler animal, but he per- 

 sisted that it was a tiger proper, which had retired into the 

 thicket to feast on a wild pig which it had killed in the early 

 morning. 



Leaving the main body of my companions I went for- 

 ward to examine the place and fix on the plan of action. 

 Through a finely timbered and cultivated country ran a small 

 watercourse, at this season quite dry, but fringed with high 

 dead grass, and having at one spot, on both banks, masses of 

 corinda bushes, twenty yards in depth by two hundred in 

 length. Outside were open fields, from which the opium crop 

 had been recently gathered. 



Having no confidence in the shooting of the chiefs, and 

 being at the same time anxious to give them an opportunity 

 of distinguishing themselves, I directed them to advance down 

 the nullah on the elephants, while I went quietly forward 

 on foot, and mounted a tree at the farther end of the 

 thicket. 



As the elephants came on, the tigress, for such it was, 

 showed herself for an instant, and then retiring under a dense 

 mass of green foliage, lay perfectly quiet. Shots were fired 

 and stones were hurled, but she would not move, and even 

 had the strong thorns not been too much for the elephants, I 

 do not think the chiefs would have cared to go up to the spot 

 where she lay concealed. 



At length I determined to alter our tactics, and shouting 

 to the others to clear out of the bushes, I left my tree and 

 mounted another at the other end of the covert. A strong 

 wind was blowing towards me, and I directed my men to fire 

 the grass at the far end of the thicket. In a few minutes the 

 high grass was burning fiercely, but the ground under the 

 green bushes was bare, and the tigress, having chosen her posi- 



