CAMP FIRE YARNS 339 



it stone dead, with poor E., who had fainted, lying 

 beside it ! On his recovery a litter of branches of 

 trees was improvised by the beaters, as well as another 

 for the tiger. He told me that long afterwards he was 

 haunted with the horrid vision of this striped monster, 

 from whose jaws he had so narrowly escaped, being 

 carried for miles alongside of him, and he too weak 

 to say anything ! He eventually went home on sick 

 certificate, but his arm was much shattered and bent. 

 One would imagine that after such a fearful experi- 

 ence he would have given tigers a wide berth ; but, 

 on the contrary, on his return to India after his recovery, 

 he swore eternal enmity to tigers generally ; and 

 learning that a terrible man-eating tigress had appeared 

 in the Kolnar Valley below, and that she had killed 

 and eaten many of the inhabitants of a village there, 

 which had become nearly deserted, and that Govern- 

 ment had offered a large reward for its destruction, 

 he at once organized a tiger-shooting party, and 

 persuaded my chum and myself to join it, making 

 altogether five of us, while our friends pronounced the 

 affair a most foolhardy undertaking. 



iWe started about the middle of May, and made 

 Elliot our captain, I being appointed interpreter, from 

 my knowledge of Mahrattee ; and we secured the best 

 shikarees (huntsmen) possible. We rode to the village 

 of Tamba, and on our arrival there learned that our 

 friend the feline enemy had killed a man the day 

 before, and, while we were encamped, had carried off 

 a poor woman during the night within rifle-shot of our 

 tent. This tigress was described to us as an enormous 

 beast, with a long, lanky body, without a particle of hair 

 on her back ; and the natives were in such terror of her 

 that they offered up daily sacrifices to propitiate her. 



