THE TIGER. 25 



moan of the Tiger, and grasped my rifle at every rustle of the leaves, but the night passed 

 away without another sign of him. 



At daylight, my Shikari made his appearance, and, tired and disgusted, I descended from 

 my tree after a weary watch of twenty-four hours. 



The Tiger never returned to the cow, and although I subsequently tied up other baits 

 for him he would never take them, and I left the neighbourhood without even getting a 

 glimpse of the animal which I had taken such pains to secure. 



Perhaps this unsatisfactory ending is disappointing to the reader : I cannot help it. 

 Shooting adventures do not always end — as three-volume novels ought to — to the satisfac- 

 tion of every one ; though even in novels there is generally a villain who has to be punished. 

 In this instance, I suppose, I must have been the villain ; at any rate the Tiger had the 

 best of it ! 



On one of my last expeditions against Tigers, in 1878, I was accompanied by two friends 

 S. and L. We had only a few days to spare, and we did not intend to confine ourselves to 

 Tigers alone, but to take whatever came in the way. L., however, had never shot a Tiger, 

 so I was anxious that he should bag one. I preceded my friends by a couple of days, to 

 procure Elephants and make other arrangements. The Elephants which were lent to us 

 were anything but staunch, as my narrative will show ; all the best Elephants at the station 

 being hors de combat from one cause or another. Having reached the place where I intended 

 to commence operations, I pitched the camp, and sent men in all directious for ' khubr ' of 

 Tigers. I soon heard of two ; one had killed a calf within a mile of the tents only a day 

 or two before, while another had killed a buffalo about three miles off. The former Tiger was 

 said to inhabit a grass jungle, where there was much 'ftissuu ' (quicksand) and consequently 

 impracticable for Elephants. The latter had killed the buffalo on the edge of a sal jungle 

 which was pretty extensive and rather open, so that there was no particular place in which 

 we could reckon upon finding the Tiger at home. On the second morning after my arrival 

 my friends joined me, having lost their way and spent the whole night wandering about on 

 a pad Elephant ! Breakfast, however, soon set them to rights, and about midday we started 

 in search of the slayer of the buffalo. 



On reaching the small collection of thatched huts, which represented a village in that 

 part of the world, we were shown the place where the Tiger had seized the buffalo, and the 

 track by which it had been dragged away was still visible, though nearly obliterated by 

 recent rain. The villagers could give us no idea as to where we were likely to find the Ti°-er 

 but on enquiry I found that the sal forest was intersected by two or three narrow water- 

 courses which eventually joined a large river which bounded one side of the forest. Although 

 the jungle had been burned, there were dense patches left every here and there, where the 

 grass had been too wet to burn, and there were many places where a Tiger might find the 

 cool shade in which he delights. 



I determined to beat along one of these watercourses to begin with : we had ten Elephants, 

 so I asked L. to take the left of the line and follow the course of the stream. S. took the 

 centre, and I was on the right, the pad Elephants being distributed between us, and our front 



D 



