108 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



nor did any of us forget that lesson of patience and perse- 

 verance ultimately rewarded so satisfactorily to all concerned. 

 Our leader, to whose experience and pertinacity was mainly 

 due this successful termination of our labours, must have felt 

 gratified at such an example of his doctrines. 



This tigress measured nine feet three inches, and would in 

 a few days more have given birth to four cubs, two of each 

 sex. She had most certainly been in that grass covert all 

 that day and the previous day, creeping now before the line, 

 now after it ; crouching low upon the ground, wheeling when 

 we wheeled, and taking advantage of every tuft and bunch 

 of high grass to conceal her movements ; always silent, crafty, 

 and untiring. Long before the death the covert had been 

 completely trampled down, so that our eyes could search 

 through it everywhere. It is, then, wonderful how she con- 

 trived to move about unseen, except that time when our 

 comrade saw her tail ; nor, strange to add, had the elephants 

 once signalled her presence. Had our friend fired rapidly 

 ahead when he detected her tail disappearing in the jungle 

 she would most probably have been slain three hours sooner, 

 since, even if his bullet missed her, the shot would have 

 startled her into some movement which would have betrayed 

 to us her near presence. 



The week's trip ended with a total bag of five tigers only, 

 shot on three different days, the time it was undertaken 

 being too early in the season, and before fire had cleared 

 away the rankest coverts. The following month (April) a 

 similar party padded sixteen tigers in a fortnight or three 

 weeks in the country a little further north, about Dewan- 

 gunge, on both banks of the river, as high up as Singamari 

 and Chilmari. I have known thirty-six to be shot in the 

 month between Dewangunge and Dubri by a party of men 

 who knew how to handle the spear and rifle equally well, 

 and who slew many a good boar besides the above tale of 

 tigers during the trip alluded to here. 



Many tigers are missed through the hasty conclusion 

 arrived at by some sportsmen that one being killed in the 



