A LARGE TIGER LOST UNACCOUNTABLY. 101 



day; but if a painful wound be added it becomes of the 

 shortest, and then an encounter is often courted ; but this is 

 by no means to be calculated upon as a certainty, since, strange 

 as it may seem to the inexperienced, even a wounded tiger 

 will often display great want of pluck, and will shun the 

 encounter by the adoption of all sorts of devices. 



H. R. and I beat one day, with a dozen elephants, a fine 

 piece of high grass some sixty acres in extent, within a loop 

 of the river Tungun, in the Maldah district. The weather 

 was extremely sultry, and the time about noon, when a 

 waving motion of the grass was noticed just in front of me, 

 which I believed to be caused by a retreating tiger, and 

 accordingly fired, but either missed altogether, or only grazed 

 the animal fired at ; at all events no growl answered the shot. 

 Signalling to R. to look out, we moved quickly on ahead, in 

 a good and tolerably compact line, till the end of the loop 

 overhanging steeply the almost dry river was approached, 

 when a very large tiger showing himself to me for an instant, 

 received a bullet which most probably struck him, as he 

 spoke to it, and wheeling to the left broke through the 

 elephants on that flank, my comrade being on the right. 

 Before the tiger got through I obtained a fair view of his head 

 and left side, and again struck him too far back, as he raced 

 past at great speed. Now the line had to go about to head 

 up to the throat of the loop facing the open fields, but before 

 it had proceeded a hundred paces, it was again broken through 

 by the tiger not far from R., who fired a couple of barrels 

 rapidly as his elephant swerved to the charge of the tiger, 

 which going on a score of yards at speed suddenly stopped, 

 and stood up on his hind legs to take a good look at us over 

 the high grass, and in this posture while presenting his broad 

 chest and head to R., was once more fired at by him and then 

 dropped as if mortally wounded. Some of the elephants, 

 alarmed by these rapidly succeeding charges, had clubbed and 

 delayed us, thus losing to us a few precious moments, and a 

 minute or two slipped by before the line was re-formed to 

 beat up again to the end of the loop. We felt so confident 



