THE TERM: SPORT OF PRINCES 219 



of an animal, now bare and bleached. An elephant 

 screams sharply, and the others tap the ground with their 

 agile trunks, emitting a metallic sound of warning as 

 they scent the wily foe. See, there is a well-tramped 

 spot in a thorny cane-brake, where a tiger has been lying 

 partly in the water for coolness ! A cane-brake is an 

 ugly place to put an elephant through. It is a tangled 

 mass of green, shiny ropes, all twined in loops, every few 

 inches armed with the sharpest and most hooked of 

 ' wait-a-bit ' thorns. No elephant will stand thorns, 

 which stick in his great feet and legs. These thorns 

 will penetrate strong leather, and the coils of cane are so 

 long and strong, creeping about for scores of yards, that 

 to get in amongst the tangle is to stay there some time. 

 The tiger has his passages under the brake, and can crouch 

 and slip through any place. Here he lies all the hot day, 

 secure against any intruders. No animal except the 

 grunting boar can penetrate to disturb him. The boar 

 is a sulky brute, and does not fear to have a tussle even 

 with the king of the jungles, the royal tiger, and some- 

 times gets a good score off him. Our old shikari says 

 that he once came across a dead tiger and a dying boar 

 l3dng together, the former ripped up to the liver by the 

 sharp edge of the boar's tusks, and covered with bleeding 

 gashes. The boar was mauled all over by claw marks ; 

 but his neck is so thick and his vitals so well covered by 

 fat that the tiger's teeth could not penetrate deep enough, 

 and so the tiger finds him a most ugly customer to en- 

 counter. 



Slowly and carefully the mahouts force the unwilling 

 pad elephants to trample out every thicket, and there is 

 not a lair left unexplored ; the line is kept advancing 

 towards the end, which narrows to the head of the covert, 

 and only some hundred yards of thick jungle grass remain 



