ANGLING FOR TIGERS 131 



said B. The dancers continued their gyrations until his 

 majesty's jaws were said to be widely open, but whether this 

 was so or not, at all events the ladies retired only after a little 

 silver had changed hands. It is wondrous the power of money ! 

 That even the sadly depreciated rupee had so mighty an 

 influence on the appetite of a tiger and on the mechanism of 

 his jaws that it could force the royal beast to eat certain articles 

 of food and leave others was truly wonderful ! After this 

 impressive ceremony we were bound to feel convinced that all 

 the tigers in the jungles around were roaming about open- 

 mouthed seeking what they could devour, which we sincerely 

 hoped might be beef, and nothing else for some time to come. 

 But as too sudden a change of diet is good for no one, and 

 therefore presumably hurtful fo a tiger's digestion also, a day 

 or two had yet to elapse before a kill was at last reported. 



At our first dinner in camp a cherry tart had supplied the 

 means of taking a peep into the future, of foretelling the good or 

 bad luck in store for us with the tigers ; on religiously counting 

 the stones in fours : hurra bagh, chota bagh, cheeta, cooch-ne,* 

 we curiously enough all finished with a burra bagh ! Still more 

 curious to relate we did get a big tiger next day, and our faith 

 in cherries and their stones was rampant. Cherry tart was 

 voted a standing dish without dissentient voice, but for some 

 unknown reason after the first evening the stones seemed always 

 multiples of four, and we soon got to hate the innocent fruit and 

 the very sound of cooch-ne echoed infallibly by the shikari next 

 morning. 



I very much doubt if the particular method of shooting tigers 

 of necessity in vogue in this part of India (Deccan) truly 

 deserves the name of sport. It reminds one too strongly of 

 the Thames angler who patiently sits on his box and apparently 

 spends his time in a somnolent condition with occasional lucid 

 intervals in which he baits his hook, and on rare occasions pulls 

 out a fish. He, at all events, has the advantage of watching 

 the whole process from the bait entering the water to the fish 

 leaving it struggling on the hook. 



We tie our bullocks to a tree at night, leave them there and 

 go in the early morning to see whether we have had a bite ; if 

 not, as is nearly always the case, we untie our bait and go home, 

 * Large tiger, little tiger, leopard, nothing. 



