310 TRACKING THE ''DON." 



After following the trail across burnt open country for some little way, 

 it turned suddenly sharp down towards the river again, some distance below 

 the dam. The tiger had supped the night before without calculating on being 

 called upon to run for a mile on a hot day across open country, and with a 

 trifle of a hundred pounds or so of beef inside him he apparently did not feel 

 equal to the exertion. That intemperate dinner, the fatal determination to 

 try the small covers along the river, cost the Don his Ufe. Each step that 

 we followed towards the cool river assured us that he was putting himself 

 into our power, and our hopes rose high. The river below the dam flowed 

 rapidly over gravel and rocks ; crossing here the Don had entered a thick 

 patch of cover on the opposite bank, about two acres in extent, between the 

 river and the Honglewaddy channel 



I at once took up my post in a small tree on the upper side of the 

 channel with one tracker, as the men said that he would not keep between 

 the channel and river to the next small cover, but would cross the channel, 

 travel under cover of a thin strip of bushes on its upper bank, and recross it 

 into cover further down. Almost at the first shout of the beaters the tiger 

 trotted out and crossed the channel exactly as the trackers had predicted ; 

 but as soon as he came to the open ground near my tree he broke into a 

 fast gallop, coming straight under me. He was an immensely heavy tiger, 

 short on the legs, but long in the body and thick set, and as he ran his fore- 

 arms looked bowed out to deformity by the great development of muscle. 

 He breathed heavily as he galloped — a husky chuckle, I fancied, at the way 

 in which he thought he was outdoing us. Had he but looked up and seen 

 the eager eyes and grim rifle following him ! As he came under me I gave 

 liim the express down into his neck (this shot hit to the right of the verte- 

 brae), and the left took him in the right thigh, downwards ; but neither we 

 afterwards found got well into him, though both were severe wounds. He 

 rolled over and over with horrible growls, going heels over head with the 

 sudden check to his impetus ; but picking himself up, he got into cover before 

 I could turn in my awkward position. We felt, however, that his fate was 

 sealed, and great was our jubilation. 



The trackers and beaters having now collected we made a grand redis- 

 tribution of forces. Men were immediately started off in couples to all the 

 important points far and near, with instructions to climb commanding trees 

 and to mark the tiger down when we moved him. Having given them time 

 to reach their posts, the trackers and I, on elephants, followed the tiger's 

 blood-trail to the end of the bushes, about two hundred yards, where there was 

 a dense and thorny thicket twenty yards in diameter. Having ascertained 

 that the tiger had not crossed the channel, we knew he must be in this. 



