friend, and it occurred in this way.  In the middle of the night there were loud cries of “Tiger!” from a hut near his house which was occupied by some of his people.  He always kept a loaded gun near him at night, and at once rushed out and fired, when two men came up to the bungalow and declared that a tiger had begun to claw the thatch off the roof of the hut in order to get at them.  This was alarming to the planter, as, if proved, many of his people might have left the place, and he told the men to sleep in his veranda, and that he would see in the morning if their story was true.  He then went to bed and rose very early the following morning, before anyone was about, and found that the story was quite true, and saw the tracks of the tiger.  These he carefully obliterated, and then went back to bed.  Then when he rose at his usual time he roused the men and asked to be shown the track of the tiger.  This of course they could not do, and he laughed off the whole story, and treated it as a fanciful illusion.  I find many stories in sporting books of the great courage and determination often shown by natives in connection with tigers, but my Nilgiri planter friend told me one which was really astonishing.  A tiger one day had carried off a Toda cattle herd, and his friend or relative was determined to recover the body, and was about to proceed single-handed and unarmed into the jungle with this view.  My friend saw that he could not prevent him, and as he did not like to let him to go in alone, went with him.  They went in accordingly, and presently heard the tiger crunching the bones of his unfortunate victim, but when the tiger heard them approaching he retired, and the Toda recovered what was left of the body.  There can be no doubt, however, that the death of one of a party does exercise a chilling effect on the zeal of the natives, or at least on a considerable proportion of them, but after all this is not surprising, as I have found a similar coldness coming over my own proceedings when a tiger has retorted with effect on his pursuers.  On the occasion I am now alluding to an unfortunate report had spread that a tiger I had wounded had left the jungle in which we found him, and whither he had retreated.  I had wounded the tiger in the evening, and we went to look him up next morning, and the beaters, influenced no doubt by the report in question, went into the jungle in a body in a careless manner, and without sending men up trees to keep a look out ahead.

The tiger waited till the whole party was within springing distance, and then with a tremendous roar which I clearly heard at my post some way off, charged, and buried his deadly fangs in the back of an unfortunate Hindoo peasant who was leading the way.  The poor fellow was carried out of the jungle in an evidently dying state, and a caste dispute arose over him, the particulars of which I have given in my chapter on caste.  After doing what we could for him we placed him on a rough litter and he was carried to the rear.