70 TIGERS. 



but when the moon reappeared she was gone, and, although 

 we sat there till 9 a.m. it was in vain. This experience 

 of sitting up over a kill, was only once repeated by me, 

 over the remains of a woman which had been killed by 

 the same tiger near Sunkerrumpett, three years after the 

 above occurrence, but it was a ghastly vigil, and, getting 

 sick of the business after a couple of hours' watch, I 

 returned to camp, keeping an uncommonly sharp look- 

 out over my shoulder ; the moon was shining brightly, 

 but it was an uncomfortable experience in every sense of 

 the word. The tiger almost always commences its meal 

 at the lower part of its victim's thigh, whether animal 

 or human being, but in the latter case it sometimes begins 

 at the feet, and devours the legs as far as the knees. 

 A man-eater seldom returns to its kill ; they are much too 

 cunning to do so ; moreover, in the case of a human being, 

 there is little or nothing left for a second visit. 



They are furnished indifferently from both types of 

 tiger, and are as a rule tigresses, which probably contract 

 the habit when hampered by their cubs, and obliged to 

 kill something for them. In the Annamullays, tiger tracks 

 were visible in many places, but the animals themselves 

 were seldom seem. The Carders predicted that the 

 carcases of the bison I had shot, would soon attract them to 

 Perrincudavoo, where I was encamped at one time ; and at 

 four o'clock next morning their prophecy was fulfilled by a 

 tiger patrolling round the camp, and roaring at intervals, 

 but it was too dark to see him in the dense shadows of the 

 forest trees. The only recorded case of a man-eater in 

 those hills was at this spot, where some years previous a 

 tiger had earned off several Carders, but it was eventually 

 shot by Vyapoori Moopen,* after killing a pony and gorg- 

 * Chief of the tribe. 



