228 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA 



when young tigers are about, thougii this sign is not always 

 to be rehed on as denoting the absence of tigers. I thought 

 so for a long time, till one day in the Betiil country, after 

 hunting long in the heat of a May day for a couple of 

 tigers whose marks were plentiful all about, we came up 

 to a small pool of water at the head of a ravine, and saw 

 the last chance of finding them vanish, as I thought, when 

 a troop of monkeys were found quietly sitting on the rocks 

 and drinking at the water. I was carelessly descending 

 to look for prints, with my rifle reversed over my shoulder, 

 and another step or two would have brought me to the 

 bottom of the ravine, when the monkeys scurried with a 

 shriek up the bank, and the head and shoulders of a large 

 tiger appeared from behind a boulder, and stared at me 

 across the short interval. I was meditating whether to fire 

 or retreat, when almost from below my feet the other tiger 

 bounded out with a terrific roar, and they both made of£ 

 down the ravine. I was too much astonished to obtain a 

 steady shot, and I was by that time too well acquainted 

 with tiger shooting to risk an uncertain one, so they escaped 

 for the time. I quickly regained my elephant, which was 

 standing above, and followed them up. It was exceedingly 

 hot, and we had not gone more than a couple of hundred 

 yards when I saw one of the tigers crouched under a bush 

 on the bank of the ravine. I got a steady shot from the 

 howdah, and fired a three-ounce shell at his broad forehead 

 at about thirty yards. No result. It was most curious, 

 and I paused to look; but never a motion of the tiger 

 acknowledged the shot. I then went round a quarter 

 of a circle, but still the tiger remained motionless, looking 

 intently in the same direction. I marched up, rifle on full- 

 cock, growing more and more amazed — ^but the tiger never 

 moved. Could he be dead ? I went round to his rear and 

 approached close up from that direction. He never 

 stirred. Then I made the elephant kick him, and he fell 

 over. He was stone dead — converted, without the move- 

 ment of a hair, into a statue of himself by the bursting of 

 the large shell in his brain. It had struck him full in the 

 centre of the forehead. We then went on with the track 

 of the other. It led down into the Moran river, on the 



