ne, about a few hundred yards from the termination of the jungle
we were beating. As I thought I might get a shot at it, I went across the
grassland in the direction of the sound, and up to within about ten yards
of the edge of the jungle, the fringe of which at that point projected a
little. I could see nothing, but as the people were coming my way in any
case, I remained where I was. The first person to arrive was a very plucky
Hindoo peasant--a keen sportsman and splendid stalker--and when he almost
touched me he at once pointed and said "There is a tiger." I put my rifle
to my shoulder, and said to him "Where?" "There," he said, and as he put
his hand on my shoulder I could feel it trembling with excitement. Alas, I
could not make out the tiger; but, after all, that was not so very
wonderful, as the day was dark, and the underwood fringe rather thick, but
the tiger actually managed to back gradually away without my being able to
see him. He had evidently been stalking the sambur, which had uttered the
note of alarm I had heard, and no doubt seeing that there was something at
the edge of the jungle, had crawled to the edge, and there lain down
within ten or twelve yards of me.

Tigers seem to recover easily from wounds, and so completely, that no
trace of a bullet having entered the body can be found. On one occasion I
shot a tiger, and when the skin was being removed we perceived a lump on
the inner side of it. This we opened, and found that it contained a bullet
which a brother of mine had fired into the tiger about a year before. We
had no difficulty in identifying the bullet, as no other rifle in the
country had anything like it. The tiger was perfectly well and fat, and
had not a mark on it of having been previously wounded, and yet the bullet
had gone close to mine, which proved fatal to the tiger. In 1891 I killed
a tiger, which had evidently, from his action, been hunted before. He was
in unusually good condition, and yet had a piece of lead in him, which
appeared to be a fragment of an express bullet. But a friend of mine tells
me that he has often found old bullets in tigers. It is a surprising thing
that tigers and panthers seem often to be little influenced by wounds, and
I have heard of one case of a panther, for which a sportsman was sitting
up, which returned to the kill after being wounded and fired at several
times. A friend of mine was once out small game shooting on the Nilgiris
when a tiger seized o