AFTER TIGERS* 47 
appeared to be very large. Vexed with my bad luck ; I 
turned home, wishing I had had old Emam with me instead 
of only this young half-fledged shikarle. 
Another day 1 had a little excitement when out with 
Emam ; we came to a place where a tiger had been dragging 
some animal, which, from the bits of skin and hair, we found 
to be a sambur. Emam took up the track with the eagerness 
of an old hound finding a scents and whispered to me that we 
should come on the tiger directly, and that 1 was to shoot him 
**bey shuk" (without doubt). I did not half like the idea of 
meeting my first tiger on foot, especially as I had missed, 
failed to bag, is a pleasanter way of putting it, a fine bull 
bison that very morning ! From after experience I am sure 
beginners often miss large game from firing through bamboos 
and bushes, as it is surprising how small a twig will turn 
a bullet quite wide of the mark ; this, and what I have already 
written with regard to seeing where the heart is, I hope 
accounts for some desperate misses I have made at bison 
almost as big as barn doors 1 But to return to the tiger. 
I was determined that the old savage should not see that I 
did not like it, so on I went, cautiously creeping after him, 
hoping all the time that the tiger had choked himself, or had 
finished his dinner and made himself scarce. As luck would 
have it, he had done the latter, and it was on this occasion 
that I spoke to Emam about shooting a tiger on foot in an 
open forest like the Da nd illy, and he then gave me the advice 
already mentioned ; he also added that if we had come on the 
tiger, and he was facing us, he would not have let me fire. 
On leaving the Dandilly forest we went to different places 
where tigers were known to be. The plan adopted was to post 
bullocks in likely places, and obtain, if we could, "a kill" 
