240 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA 



How tlie tiger marked down in the morning is to be 

 hunted and killed at midday, when all life in the forest 

 is still beneath the scorching heat of the sun, and the 

 brute himself is least on his guard and most unwilling 

 to move, will have been seen from previous descriptions. 

 To read the hunting of one tiger is like that of every 

 other; but a different set of incidents marks each day's 

 Sport in the memory of the hunter, who pictures vividly 

 the death of each long after incidents of his sport with 

 every sort other of game have faded away. The main 

 features are the careful preliminary arrangements, the 

 settling the direction of approach so as to cut off all roads 

 of escape to inaccessible fastnesses, the posting of scouts 

 to notify the possible retreat of the tiger, and the cautious, 

 silent approach, the excitement gathering as the innermost 

 recess of the cover, where the brute is expected to lie, is 

 approached by the wonderfully intelUgent and half -human 

 elephant. 



A strange affection springs up between the hunter and 

 his well-tried ally in the chase of the tiger ; and a creature 

 seeming to those who see him only in the menagerie, or 

 labouring under a load of baggage, but a lumbering mass of 

 flesh, becomes to him almost a second self, yielding to his 

 service the perfection of physical and mental qualities of 

 which a brute is capable, and displaying an intelligent 

 interest in his sport of which no brute could be thought to 

 be possessed. No one who has not witnessed it would 

 beheve the astonishing caution with which a well-trained 

 elephant approaches a tiger, removing with noiseless 

 adroitness every obstacle of fallen timber, etc., and passing 

 his huge bulk over rustling leaves, or rolling stones, or 

 quaking bog, with an absolute and marvellous silence; 

 handing up stones, when ordered, for his master to fling 

 into the cover ; smelling out a cold scent as a spaniel roads 

 a pheasant; and at last, perhaps, pointing dead with 

 sensitive trunk at the hidden monster, or showing with 

 short nervous raps of that organ on the ground that he is 

 somewhere near, though not actually discovered to the 

 senses of the elephant. Then the imswerving steadiness 

 when he sees the enemy he naturally dreads, and would 



