THE ONE-EYED MAN-EATER. 71 



man named Provis, out from England for the first 

 time. We had pitched our camp at a wayside 

 overseer's bungalow, about ten miles from the vil- 

 lage of Gangur and on the Chittaldroog side. The 

 country was open for several miles on all sides of 

 the bungalow, the forest beginning some four miles 

 west, where the road descended a kind of ghat 

 (hill-side) into the valley leading to the Badra 

 river. It was this spot that the man-eater was 

 said chiefly to frequent, although his range ex- 

 tended to villages many miles away. Owing to 

 four ddk-men having been carried off by the 

 tiger we could not get our letters from the 

 nearest postal station, but had to ride in our- 

 selves once a week to Shimoga, forty miles off. 

 None of our servants nor the villagers dared to go 

 alone any distance from the bungalow. Provis had 

 heard and read so much of tiger-shooting that 

 he was eager to have a pot at the tiger, all the 

 more so from the fact of its being a man-eater, for 

 great would be the kudos should he bag him. We 

 scoured the country for miles, doing our prospect- 

 ing at the same time, but never got sight of the tiger. 

 We sat out night after night in a machan in all 

 the most likely places, with a fine buffalo as a bait ; 

 yet no tiger came. When we were at Gangur 

 we heard of him at Ubrani ; when we got there, 

 he had " killed" at some village ten miles off. 

 We should have grown sceptical as to the ex- 

 istence of the tiger if it were not for the 

 gruesome sight of the partially-eaten body of 

 a young woman taken from the fields in broad 



