In hilly tracts where the hills run in long ridges and are flanked or intersected by ravines, as in Rajpootana, tiger-shooting may at all times be conducted on foot with comparative safety. This was successfully done by Colonel (then Lieutenant) Rice from twenty to twenty-five years back. He never once employed an elephant, and treats the notion of doing so with a certain amount of disdain. Confessing to a desire to employ his rifle on the tigers in the island of Singapore, which is (or certainly was) very much infested by them, he remarks: ‘There the old notion prevails that without elephants tigers are best let alone.’ Evidently the Colonel does not consider the elephant a necessary adjunct to the sport, nor did he really find it so. There can, however, be no question that in large swamps and grass tracts, and in fact under all circumstances, an elephant is a most powerful auxiliary, whose importance cannot be over-rated. If trees and such positions are taken to meet the tiger when he first breaks, the advantage of afterwards following him up on an elephant if only wounded, is too obvious to need any comment. But it is of course absolutely necessary that the elephant should be one which can be depended on for making a firm stand before a tiger. The more steady the elephant, the better the aim that can be taken; but the uninitiated should know that there is always some slight oscillatory movement in an elephant, so that a small though perhaps an infinitesimal measure of calculation has to be applied in shooting from its back. From a neglect of this necessity, tigers are sometimes missed at absurdly close quarters, though there may be no actual change in the elephant's position to account for the circumstance, and to justify the miss. On the other hand, as sometimes happens, an elephant may very seriously incommode or perhaps precipitate his rider to the ground, by actually charging a tiger and dropping down on his knees, in order the better to crush the foe. At the same time, an elephant that bolts jeopardises his rider's life in a worse degree, by the reckless manner in which he pursues his flight. Should the jungle consist of trees, there is almost a certainty of the howdah being dashed up against them, or of its being swept off by some projecting bough, which affords a clear passage to the body of the elephant, but not to the howdah and those seated in it. The latter, therefore, run a serious risk of being badly injured or of losing their lives.
One important essential for the obtaining of sport is a liberal expenditure of money. It both sweetens labour and smooths the path to danger. To keep an elephant in prime hearty condition costs about fifteen pounds a month, and good elephants may occasionally be borrowed from native chiefs through the instrumentality of political officers; but unless one has influence enough to insure his being thus favoured, he should make up his mind to hunt on foot. Many men have done, and still do so with the most satisfactory results; while with respect to elephants, some special elements of risk exist, which prove fatal entirely from a want of common forethought. Thus, an unfortunate officer of one of Her Majesty's regiments serving in India ventured into a jungle after a tiger, seated merely on the pad on which a howdah is made to rest; he was thrown off, and fell into the jaws of the enraged beast. A person seated in this manner is at any moment liable to be thrown by a sudden swerve, and such an occurrence is extremely likely when a tiger charges, or suddenly appears before an elephant. The writer remembers an instance within his own experience of being mounted on an elephant off whose back at least a hundred tigers had at various times been killed, and which was therefore generally very staunch, and of there being a second and third elephant on each side of the first; yet on a panther very little bigger than a large cat charging from a bush, the three elephants together turned in an instant and ignominiously retreated for about a dozen yards. The shock of the movement was so great that he was forced back on the seat from which he had just risen the moment before, and must have infallibly been hurled to the ground had he been seated on a pad only. It should therefore be adopted as a rule never to be deviated from, that a tiger should not be approached on an elephant otherwise than in a properly constructed howdah.
But as a contrast to the behaviour of the panther above referred to, a large tiger will sometimes altogether refuse to face an elephant, and will retreat from point to point of a cover until he at last becomes an easy victim; which shews in what extremely opposite lights the subject requires to be looked at.
The duty of arranging a proper plan of attack upon a tiger in any known position is sometimes delegated by the English sportsman to his head native shikaree, who is qualified for that task both by a certain aptitude and a considerable amount of experience; but the best of such men are apt sometimes to fail, and close supervision of them is consequently always necessary. Besides, they are generally trained by those who have them in their service; and a long course of association and reciprocal action between master and servant is needed to produce an efficient henchman. It is therefore advisable for men who are about to begin tiger-shooting to take their initiatory lessons in jungle-craft under the guidance of some brother-sportsman, who can be looked on as a sort of distinguished professor who has already graduated with honours in his studies.
[THE BELL-RINGER.]
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER II.—THE STORY OF RUTH.
‘I can't think whatever's come over Nathan; he's that queer there's no such thing as making of him out.’ This remark was addressed by Mark Day, the tenor bell-ringer, to Obadiah Lang, who rang the third bell, a few days after the events narrated in the previous chapter.
‘Ay,’ responded Obadiah. ‘There's the practisin' for Christmas-eve, the practisin' for the carols and for the hymns a' Christmas-day; he don't seem to care about them at all, and when I says to him: “How about the evergreens for the church?” he stared hard, and said: “I'll see;” and walked off.’