your right without turning
your whole body half round in that direction--a movement which might catch
the eye of the tiger. To surmount this difficulty Sir Samuel Baker has
invented a small stool with a revolving top, which is no doubt air
excellent thing if there is time to erect a suitable platform on which to
support the stool, but it often happens that positions have to be taken up
in a hurry, and that you have to sit on the fork of a branch, or on the
ground behind a bush or rock, where the tiger may pass on either side. In
such cases the shooter should sit facing nearly full face to the right, as
he can, with hardly any perceptible movement of his body fire readily to
his left, and he should instruct his man with the second gun to point with
his finger in order to indicate the side on which the tiger is
approaching.

In all the books I have read about tigers I have never met with an
allusion to tigers purring like cats from satisfaction, but a brother
planter informs me that he heard a wounded tiger, that had killed one of
the natives who was following him up, purr for several minutes, as he
described it, "like a thousand cats." The evening was closing in when the
accident occurred and as the jungle was thick nothing could be done. On
the following morning the man and the tiger were found lying dead
together.

Of all sports tiger shooting affords the most lasting satisfaction, and it
is especially interesting when one lives in tigerish localities where one
has more leisure and opportunity for going into all the details of this
delightful sport, and where a knowledge of the people and their language
makes the sport so much more agreeable, and one's acquaintance with the
ground enables one to take an active and intelligent part in regulating
the plan of operations when a tiger has killed. Then in the case of an
animal so destructive it is seldom possible to feel any commiseration,
though I have done so on certainly one, or perhaps two occasions. Against
many sports something may be said, but that is impossible as regards tiger
shooting. The tying out of live baits may be objected to, but after all
the tooth of the tiger is to be preferred to the knife of the butcher.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] G. P. Sanderson's "Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India,"
1878.

[16] "Reminiscences of Life in Mysore, South Africa and Burmah." By
Major-General R. S. Dobbs. London, Hatchards, Piccadilly, 1882.

[17] _Vide_ Appendix