S. called out to me to remain quiet, and see if we could trace the tiger’s progress by any rustling in the cover.  Looking down we saw the kill, close to the edge of the water.  A fast elephant was sent on ahead, to try and ascertain whether the tiger was likely to break beyond the circle of the little basin-shaped valley.  We gathered round the kill; it was quite fresh; a young buffalo.  The Major told us that in his experience, a male tiger always begins on the neck first.  A female always at the hind quarters.  A few mouthfuls only had been eaten, and according to the Major, it must have been a tigress, as the part devoured was from the hind quarters.

While we were talking over these things, a frenzied shout from the driver of our naka elephant caused us to look in his direction.  He was gesticulating wildly, and bawling at the top of his voice, ’Come, come quickly, sahibs, the tiger is running away.’

Now commenced such a mad and hurried scramble as I have never witnessed before or since, from the back of an elephant.  As we tore through the tangled dense green patair, the broad leaves crackled like crashing branches, the huge elephants surged ahead like ships rocking in a gale of wind, and the mahouts and attendants on the pad elephants, shouted and urged on their shuffling animals, by excited cries and resounding whacks.

In the retinue of the Major, were several men with elephant spears or goads.  These consist of a long, pliant, polished bamboo, with a sharp spike at the end, which they call a jhetha.  These men now came hurrying round the ridge, among the opener grass, and as we emerged from the heavy cover, they began goading the elephants behind and urging them to their most furious pace.  On ahead, nearly a quarter of a mile away, we could see a huge tiger making off for the distant morung, at a rapid sling trot.  His lithe body shone before us, and urged us to the most desperate efforts.  It was almost a bare plateau.  There was scarcely any cover, only here and there a few stunted acacia bushes.  The dense forest was two or three miles ahead, but there were several nasty steep banks, and precipitous gullies with deep water rushing between.  Attached to each Nepaulee pad, by a stout curiously-plaited cord, ornamented with fancy knots and tassels of silk, was a small pestle-shaped instrument, not unlike an auctioneer’s hammer.  It was quaintly carved, and studded with short, blunt, shining, brass nails or spikes.  I had noticed these hanging down from the pads, and had often wondered what they were for.  I was now to see them used.  While the mahouts in front rained a shower of blows on the elephants head, and the spear-men pricked him up from behind with their jhethas, the occupant of the pad, turning round with his face to the tail, belaboured the poor hathee with the auctioneer’s hammer.  The blows rattled on the elephant’s rump.  The brutes trumpeted with pain, but they did put on the pace, and travelled as I never imagined an