A MAN CARRIED OFF. 131 



further up its borders before returning home to lay our plans 

 for the morrow. It was clear now that the man-eater was 

 once more among us, having passed over a stretch of open 

 country the night before, and caused that awful cry to be 

 raised when stalking through the grass plain a mile or two 

 from my tents. 



No information came that evening, but next morning, 

 before the sun rose, men roused us from sleep, with the in- 

 telligence that late on the previous afternoon two men had 

 been wounded, and a third killed and carried off, three miles 

 from camp ; also that after seizing the unfortunate fellow, 

 the tigress had taken him into some thick tangled grass, and 

 probably there devoured him, as no one had ventured to 

 follow and drive her away, and she had not been seen 

 leaving it. 



The man who had been taken was one of a dozen or 

 more, returning together from market an hour before sun- 

 set, and who walked as is their custom in single file along a 

 foot-path parallel in a zig-zag way with the deep creek 

 and its jungles, but distant nearly a quarter of a mile from 

 the latter. We were told that the attack came frpm a mere 

 patch of low thatching grass, and at the moment it was made 

 the men were talking loudly among themselves of this very 

 beast, cursing her and her generations before and after her 

 in the very emphatic and unmistakable language common 

 among them whether men or women. The last two of the 

 file had first been struck at and knocked over, but it was the 

 third from the rear who had been ultimately seized and 

 carried away, the three having been close to each other and 

 separated from the rest by a few paces. The scene of this 

 tragedy was less than a quarter of a mile from where we 

 had turned back, and its time was less than a couple of hours 

 afterwards; it appeared then that she had walked through 

 the dense thickets a couple of miles after entering them, and 

 emerging once again had gone up a ditch and laid down in 

 ambush within striking distance of the path, no doubt well 

 known to her. 



K 2 



