272 WILD MEN AND WILD BEASTS. 



I had carefully examined them all, and had turned away 

 in despair from the last, when I happened to cast my eye 

 back, and there, within twenty yards, lying in the bottom of 

 a small channel some eight or ten feet deep, was my friend, 

 looking pleasantly at me. I quietly called to the driver to 

 stop, and kneeling on the seat of the howdah I gave him two 

 through the shoulder. He spoke at once, and scrambled 

 along the bottom of the watercourse towards the spot where I 

 had left Ward sitting. He did not go far, however, and, 

 following him up, I gave him a final shot. The feet and 

 claws of this tiger were badly blistered and damaged. The 

 blisters were probably occasioned by his walk in the hot 

 ravines on the previous day, and his claws were no doubt 

 broken as he scrambled up the steep bank this morning. 

 But for this we might possibly not have got him, for on both 

 days he seemed to think discretion to be the better part of 

 valour. 



A tiger of this description is apt to mislead an inex- 

 perienced sportsman, as to the dangerous character of these 

 beasts. Having seen a huge brute flee ignominiously before 

 the hunters, he rashly concludes that all tigers will do the 

 same, and conducting his subsequent operations in accordance 

 with this erroneous theory, sometimes pays the forfeit with 

 his life. Such was the sad fate of Captain Gowan, 6th Innis- 

 killings. Descending to the water's edge, we cracked a bottle 

 of moselle, and, after the inevitable pipe, moved homewards. 

 The following day being Saturday, we determined not to shift 

 our camp, though, having already killed four beasts close to 

 the same spot, we were not very sanguine about finding 

 more. Buffaloes were, however, again tied up in the evening, 

 and next morning one of our men came in greatly excited, 

 and said that a calf had been killed in the night, and that 



