324 WILD MEN AND WILD BEASTS. 



this place out very closely with the elephants, but found 

 nothing. We then took positions in trees, and sent men to 

 drive down the ravine. They started a big tiger, which 

 went up the side, steering clear of our posts. Expecting that 

 he would have crossed over the intervening jungle, and gone 

 down into the cover which we had first beaten, we went back, 

 and having placed Evans and Cadell on trees, I was proceed- 

 ing with Murray to beat up the covert towards them, when 

 my elephant became greatly excited, and commenced kicking 

 violently at the grass with her fore-foot. At that instant a 

 tigress rushed out, but the elephant was so unsteady that I 

 missed her with both barrels. Catching up my second rifle, 

 I was more successful, and dropped her with a shell behind 

 the shoulder. Another shot finished her. 



While this little bit of by-play was going on, the big 

 tiger which we had previously started, and which had ap- 

 parently been travelling leisurely, was seen by Evans's gun- 

 bearer to steal down into the bed of the river, where he 

 entered a long strip of cypress on the far side. Wishing to 

 cross this strip so as to get quietly down between him and 

 the jungle, Murray, Cadell, and I, moved over on the ele- 

 phants. But the tiger, which had been creeping towards us 

 under cover of the cypress, rose suddenly with loud roars, and 

 as he sprang on some masses of rock, I at one time feared 

 he would leap into the howdah. We instantly poured in a 

 volley with good effect, and, falling back, he went off down 

 the covert. We had just reloaded, when he emerged eighty 

 yards lower down, and was passing over some bare ground on 

 his way to the jungle above, when we again fired, and he fell 

 over in the open, where he lay roaring. As we made up to 

 him, he rose and scrambled back to the cypress, whence he made 

 one gallant charge before he died. We returned home well 



