THE TERAI: SPORT OF PRINCES 225 



of Lieutenant S.'s side, exposing the liver to view, and 

 tapped him gently on the head, fracturing his skull, and 

 then walked quietly away. I was once told by a native 

 herdsman that a tiger had just killed his cow and carried 

 it away in his mouth, as a cat does a rat. He showed me 

 the tracks of where the tiger had jumped on the cow, and 

 the blood on the bushes ; and pointed to a deep ravine, 

 8 to 10 feet wide, with straight banks, over which the tiger 

 had bounded, cow and all. I examined the tracks, and 

 found where he had sprung off and landed, a pretty clean 

 jump. Going on about 100 yards, we found the cow 

 lying half eaten. The cow was, to my astonishment, a 

 very fair-sized one. This story I repeated to the Chief, 

 who perfectly corroborated the case, having seen the same 

 thing often. It seems inconsistent with the fact that a 

 tiger does not jump bodily on to an elephant, which is 

 lucky for the shikari ; but this might be explained by 

 a surmise that the tiger does not realize that he has a 

 man on the elephant's back to contend with. It is the 

 elephant only he takes into account, and he would be no 

 further in the fight on the elephant's back. He could not 

 by his weight bring the huge animal down, as he does the 

 frightened cow. He goes rather for his trunk, or tries to 

 maul his fleshy limbs, in which he sometimes succeeds, 

 and so terrifies the elephant that it flies frantically 

 through the jungle, and will not again come near or face 

 a feline on any terms. Such elephants are spoilt for 

 purposes of shikar, and are very dangerous to ride on. 

 Many are the well-known stories of ambitious shikaris, 

 who have borrowed elephants said to be staunch, but which, 

 when by evil luck a tiger was encountered, have bolted 

 screeching, tail in the air, crashing through the forest 

 regardless of all obstacles, creating a panic among other 

 innocent hatis, and smashing the howdah against over- 



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