Exaggerated yams-—Man-eating tigers—An easy prey—"On the watch" — A common tragedy-—"Mourning in some lowly hut"—The Pertauhgunj tiger—Shifting camp—An obstinate elephant—River-side scenery—Revolver practice—Salamee—Rapacity of servants-—A halt —Enquiry—We form line—The beat—Elephants uneasy—The man-eater breaks cover—A tame termination—False security—" Look out, boys; it's alive!"—A dying effort and a costly bite—An instance of cool heroism- -Iu the jaws of a tiger—A plucky rescue—Moral: " Never trust a tiger."

It must not be supposed that scenes of thrilling, I might almost say sensational excitement, such as I have been describing, are of frequent occurrence. These are the incidents that stand out prominently on memory's page, and when the conversation turns on hunting topics, it is naturally

" The moving accidents, by flood and field,
The hairbreadth 'scapes,"

that first present themselves, and are recounted

"By the fitful watch-fire's gleam."

An Indian shikar expedition is indeed organised on such a scale of completeness, game of all kinds is so abundant, and a popular man in a good district, who knows how to utilise native assistance, can muster such an array of elephants, beaters, weapons and other indispensable accessories of the chase, that success more or less pronounced is almost inevitable ; yet even then there are many blank days, and commonplace incidents, which are scarcely worthy of chronicle, and a good deal of sameness is experienced, as day after day the heat for tiger progresses.

The most wonderful stories of tiger hunting as told by men who have had only occasional experience of the royal pastime; and the Griff who has perhaps been only in at the death of a half-grown cub, and even then merely as a spectator, will, in course of time, and by a natural process of indulgence in imaginative retrospection, gradually invest the incident with a series of elaborate details, which do more honour to his powers of fiction than of sober unvarnished historical accuracy. It is from such men we hear the wondrous tales of gigantic man-eaters, measuring eleven and twelve feet from the point of the nose to the tip of the tail. •Some would even fain continue the measurement backwards, and make out the animal to be twenty-four feet anything, to magnify their prowess and importance.

In reality, the tiger is not the audacious foolhardy animal the generality of tiger-stories pourtray. He is more commonly a cunning sneaking rogue, keen to perceive when the chances are against him, and ever mindful of the good old ?aw,—

"He who fights and runs away,
May live to fight another day."

As a ride, in heavy jungle, with a big line of elephants, the tiger will try to "make tracks," and slink away at the first intimation of a concerted movement against his customary haunt. A man-eater is in many cases an old brute, whose youthful vigour has fled, whose fangs have been worn down to the stump, whose active bounding agility has failed under the insidious attacks of the edax rerum, and who can no longer battle successfully with the fleet hog deer, the savage wild boar, or the wary nimble cattle of the jungly herds. By accident or design he discovers the fact that an unarmed human being falls an easier prey than the other animals he has been accustomed to hunt, and very possibly be finds a collop from the genus homo to be as toothsome as his more natural and accustomed diet of venison, pork, or rump steak.

Nearly all man-eating tigers are old animals. Their skin is generally mangy; they are very cunning; will lie in wait near the village tracks; will stalk the unwary herdsman as a cat will stalk a hedge sparrow; they know the habits of the village population as minutely as does the tax-gatherer, and once they take up their quarters near a jungle village, they become indeed a terrible scourge.

It must be remembered too, that the habits of the villagers make the role of man-eater a peculiarly easy one, if once the unholy appetite for human flesh has been awakened. Ordinarily the village husbandman goes forth at early morn to till his patch of paddy, or tend his cattle in the tall growing jungle, and the men work singly or in little groups of twos and threes. The women, wending their way to the weekly bazaar, go forth, indeed, in a string, all chattering, laughing, and laden with the produce of their little garden patch, or small holding, for sale or barter. At the bazaar, however, some dispose of their wares more quickly than others; some have purchases to make, over which a deal of chaffering is indispensable. So it is that a few of the poor things find the swift twilight suddenly descend upon them when they are yet a weary dangerous mile or two from home. 'Tis then the cruel whiskered robber is on the watch. The hushed affrighted women hurry on, their hearts thudding with trepidation, and, as they hang on to each other's skirts, they cast uneasy startled glances into every bush, and start at every rustle in the tall feathery swaying grass.

Dogging every footstep, watching every movement, the silent hungry man-eater is crawling swiftly and noiselessly alongside the path. It is marvellous with what celerity and absolute silence such a huge animal can glide through close jungle. After all, they are but cats; they have all the proverbial attributes of the feline species, and not even a snake can wind among the grass as softly and silently as the slouching man-eater hungering for human blood. The tragedy is indeed a common one in many of these villages. A basket gets overturned perhaps. A thorn enters the foot. The wretched loiterer must perforce linger a moment to pick up her little scattered purchases, adjust her dress, or stoops to extract the thorn from her foot. Then, with a swift silent bound—for the man-eater rarely betrays his presence by a roar—-the fierce animal makes his awful onslaught on the terror-stricken hapless victim, and next morning a few scattered, crunched and mangled bones are the sole evidence of the ghastly tragedy that has been enacted. There is mourning in some lowly hut. A deeper dread settles on the haunted hamlet, but the daily routine must go on, and the daily wants must be supplied. The apathetic fatalistic doctrine resumes sway, and so the tale is repeated. In planting districts, the factory manager is generally apprised of the presence of the scourge, and in the end succeeds in adding another grisly skull to his collection; but in the lonely, secluded parts of the country, a man-eating tiger is a very incarnation of destruction. No wonder that the cowering terror-stricken natives try to propitiate him by sacrifices and prayers. I have even known them withhold information as to his habits and whereabouts, from a superstitious dread, that they will thereby incur the hostility of their enemy, and bring upon themselves swift retribution.

Occasionally a few villages will combine, and organise a beat, and try to drive their grim oppressor from the neighbourhood. In such a case, badly equipped as are the peasantry, the chances are that a few are frightfully mauled, if not killed outright; and the vile brute may simply shift the scene, of his operations to a neighbouring village, ere long to be back again, bolder and more bloodthirsty than ever. I have known whole tracts of fertile country allowed to relapse into untilled jungle, from the presence of a single man-eating tiger. I have seen villages entirely deserted from the same cause; and when we therefore heard that near the village of Pertaubgunj a man-eater had taken up his abode, and was levying his terrible blackmail on the terror-stricken inhabitants, it needed little incentive else, to make us determine to beat him up, and free the neighbourhood from his diabolic attentions.

Pertaubgunj was on the southern bank of the stream, and having made arrangements for a start early in the morning, we found that the dining tent had been struck when we awoke, and that the whole camp was enveloped in the confusion attendant on a change of quarters. Already the bullock drivers had brought up their patient, mild-eyed oxen, and while some were busily splicing the tattered frayed grass ropes that bind the sides of their primitive carts, others were oiling the axles and winding hemp and tow round the naves of the wheels. Already the coolies had packed up their pots and pans, had put away the cackling skinny poultry in hampers and baskets, and the whole camp was littered with tent pegs, dhurries or carpets, nets full of Bhoota for the bullocks; and smouldering piles of ashes and damp straw on all hands showed where the servants' camp fires had been already used to cook the early morning meal of rice.

We had ample store of cold pastry and other debris of the-previous night's dinner, and washed our cold refection down with fresh milk and hot coffee. Some of us preferred the: more inviting glories of Bass, bottled by Hibbert or Stone, and it was yet grey dawn, and the fiery sun was still beneath the horizon when we mounted the pad elephants, and started off to ford the swift river, in quest of the most cruel and implacable foe of the poor Hindoo villager—the dreaded man-eating tiger.

Looking back over the level trampled plain, amid the thin wavy lines of clinging smoke, and detached columns of mist, we could see the white tops of the sleeping tents one by one sway and fall, and soon the noise of the bustling dismantled camp was left behind, and we jogged along towards the ghat. Beaching the miserable collection of boatmen's huts on the brink of the river, with the tall bamboo poles each flying a triangular tattered white rag by way of a pennon, to guide the traveller through the lonely jungle to the welcome ford— we found boats in readiness, and hastily piled up the pads and accoutrements on the largest of these, and were poled across.

It took some time to get all the elephants to take to the water, for the river was swift and deep, and the banks rotten and steep. One obstinate Hatni, or female elephant, indeed refused point blank to wet her feet, and had to be shoved in head over heels, nolens volens, by two stalwart policemen, in the shape of two of the mighty tuskers that carried howdahs. Eventually, however, all got across in safety. The village was some three miles from the ghat, and there was little cover on this side of the river. The banks were lined with a short stunted growth of jovah bushes, and beyond this lay a succession of undulating ridgy sandbanks, with deep reaches of back water from a former flood, intervening. The ground was nasty walking for elephants, being treacherous and full of quicksands. This caused the hue to open out and straggle somewhat, and it was truly an Oriental sight, to see nearly thirty huge lumbering elephants toiling heavily over these ridges, plunging into the still bayou-looking lagoons, and, with the picturesque puggrees, bronzed naked skins, and polished spears of the natives, who were clinging to the ropes like so many great monkeys, the scene was altogether a striking one.

Beyond the sandy dimes, marking the site of the river bed and the limits of its flood waters, stretched an undulating expanse of rather lone country, pleasingly broken at intervals by clumps of mango trees, plantains or bamboos. Here and there a rude hamlet clustered round a dingy white temple, whose cracked and crumbling dome and breached walls betokened very forcibly either the extreme poverty of the peasantry or their indifference to the ancient Pagan faith of their ancestors. In the far distance rose the dark shadowy line of the silent mysterious Terai, the brooding impenetrable forest belt that clothes the lower flanks of the mighty Himalayas, whose towering crests even now loomed weird and grand in the far-off haze, and gathered to themselves the floating vapours and mists of the plain; and as the sun rose, became enshrouded in an impenetrable veil of filmy clouds, that hid their snowy grandeur from our gaze.

Deeply embedded in one of the sandbanks, we came upon the rotting timbers of a hulking old river boat, one of the great lumbering structures that carry down the country produce of the border territory to the marts of Patna or Calcutta. The bleached and battered old hulk, after long years of traffic up and down the teeming Ganges, had here been cast high and dry in some impetuous flood, and now mouldered away into nothingness beside the frail tenements of an unknown fisherman's hamlet. The carcase of an overworked, worn-out bullock lay festering in the shade of the rotting ribs of the old unwieldy craft. And two mangy jackals snarled over the ghastly meal, disputing its possession with a bevy of horrid-looking vultures and common crows. On our approach, these unlovely scavengers stalked off to a safe distance, and one of the jackals gave utterance to his disapprobation by a prolonged demoniac howl, as if in protest at our intrusion. This seemed to give umbrage to Butty, who, drawing his revolver, commenced an ineffectual ball practice at the unmusical ghoul.

"We were soon collected in a circle, gazing down at the prostrate man-eater. No more now would tlie village maiden tremble as she hurried back from the bazaar. No more now would the tottering old crone cower beside the dried cow-dung fire of a night, and hush the awed children into silence by telling of the dreaded man-eater.

The man-eater was dead.