134 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



glide noiselessly over the burning rocks close by, and perhaps 

 a honey-sucker, sparkling like a gem, pays you a visit in your 

 tree. The only sound which breaks the present almost painful 

 silence is the monotonous " took, took " of the little copper- 

 smith calling from some adjacent tree-top, until suddenly a most 

 fiendish noise startles the ear, and a long line of beaters appears 

 on the crest of the hill. Rattles, tom-toms, yells, and fireworks, 

 a most powerful quartette, sufficient almost to waken the dead. 

 But at first it only disturbs the meditations of a numerous 

 family of lungoors, the members of which come bustling down 

 helter-skelter, the babies clinging to the mother's belly. A 

 peacock or two, gloriously splendid in the bright sun, flies past, 

 and then apparently the jungle is emptied of all animal life. 

 The beaters, however, work harder than ever ; bundles of burn- 

 ing grass are thrown down the face of the hill, fireworks pop 

 off in all directions, and tom-toms and rattles have apparently 

 gone mad, but nothing further comes out. When almost all 

 hope has vanished, a large tiger suddenly leaves the covert at 

 a smart run, and making for some bare rocks passes within 

 forty yards of C. Then rapidly three emotions pass in succes- 

 sion through C.'s mind, each one most vividly and acutely felt. 

 Admiration of the beauty of the royal beast as it rushes past ; 

 anxiety as to hitting it, and intense satisfaction if successful, 

 or intense mortification and misery if the shot be a miss. The 

 latter is to my mind the sharpest and the most lasting ; a miss 

 under those circumstances is simply no word is bad enough. 

 In this particular case a lucky bullet broke the tiger's spine, 

 and he fell at once and remained on the spot ; but it some- 

 times happens that a tiger has been shot at by some one else 

 before it is bowled over by the next gun. Then follow some 

 trying moments, before it is finally settled who first hit the 

 animal, and whose tiger it therefore is. This is a delicate 

 arbitration, not always arranged to everybody's satisfaction. 

 The dead tiger brought in on an elephant always has a great 

 reception from the villagers; he is accompanied to the camp 

 by young and old, all beating tom-toms and shouting. As soon 

 as the tiger is on the ground the ladies touch the animal and 

 their foreheads, and make their children, however small, do 

 the same, thereby offering a prayer to the god of tigers to spare 

 them and their kind. 



