72 IN THE INDIAN JUNGLE. 



daylight at a village seven miles from our camp 

 If we could have induced the poor weeping re- 

 latives to leave the body where it was found, we 

 might probably have got a shot at the monster 

 on his return to complete his meal. But we had 

 not the heart to urge it on them, when they 

 wished to remove what was left of their kins- 

 woman for burial. We gave them sufficient 

 money to bury their dead and drown their 

 sorrow in arrack, and turned away heart-sick at 

 the ghastly spectacle we had just witnessed, 

 vowing that we would not relax our efforts to 

 rid the place of the brute. 



Talking over the events of the day at the bunga- 

 low, Provis suggested that if one of us disguised 

 himself as a ddk-man and carried the bells over his 

 shoulder and trudged the bit of ghat road where the 

 tiger had carried off the four ddk-men, while the 

 other perched himself in a machan just near the 

 spot where the tiger had made his previous attacks, 

 we might probably get a shot at him. He thought 

 that even if nothing came of it, the attempt would 

 still serve to hearten the natives and show them 

 that ddk-running was not so dangerous after all. 

 This last argument, the inconvenience we had our- 

 selves suffered from the stoppage of the post to- 

 gether with the need of a little excitement in our 

 hum-drum life, induced me to consent to his pro- 

 posal. No thought of danger ever entered my mind 

 for the moment. The toss of a rupee soon decided 

 that I was to enact the ddk-maxi and Provis do the 

 shooting from the machan. We sat up long, talking 



