128 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



general, and had seen her more than once, he could never 

 obtain a shot with any certainty of hitting her. I now 

 suppose that when the old " Shikaree " and the man-eater 

 did meet, the former was not sufficiently high up a tree, or 

 otherwise secure from her spring to justify his firing at 

 her with his very dilapidated single-barrelled old weapon, 

 a cross between a musket and an ancient fowling-piece. 

 Quite right he was, too, not to make the venture. 



I found Moula Buksh in low spirits, whether at the 

 disappointment felt through past ill success, or the appre- 

 hension of losing a handsome reward should any one else 

 display the head and skin of this tigress ; in decidedly low 

 spirits he appeared whatever the cause ; however, he plucked 

 up both spirits and confidence after a while, and proved him- 

 self useful and cool in the sequel. 



After gathering all the information that some hours' 

 conversation enabled us to extract from the old " Shikaree " 

 and others, it became necessary to study our ground, and 

 this we did thoroughly for three whole days without hearing 

 any news of our friend, her doings, or her whereabouts. 



Briefly, the chief field of the tigress's exploits was a 

 tract of low country, running some four or five miles 

 parallel to the seacoast, and stretching nearly as far inland 

 along both banks of a creek, the salt water from which during 

 spring tides was let into shallow pans of earth, from which 

 the salt efflorescence was afterwards scraped and collected 

 when the tidal water had completely soaked into the 

 soil. The entire ground, therefore, was cut up by lines of 

 these narrow but rather deep channels, all leading from the 

 creek into the interior, and since many of them were more 

 or less overgrown with grasses and thorns, they afforded 

 just what the man-eater desired, viz., secret approaches to 

 where her victims might be at work. The fuel used for 

 boiling down the brine was mostly cut along the banks of 

 the creek and in fields of coarse grass not far from it; it 

 naturally follows then that the tigress's usual beat when in 

 search for human prey was along the edge of the heavier 





