all were mounted she led
the way across the plain. Although the ground was everywhere level and
just there uncultivated the elephants tailed off in single file as is
the habit of their kind, wild or domesticated, each stepping with
precise care into the footprints of the one in front of it. Here in the
Plains the heat was intense; and Wargrave, shading his eyes from the
blinding glare, thought enviously of the coolness up in the mountains
that he had left. As they moved along Muriel explained to him how the
beat was to be conducted.

Where the southern fringe of the Terai Jungle borders the cultivated
country it is a favourite haunt of tigers, which from its shelter carry
on war against the farmers' cattle. Creeping down the ravines seaming
the soft soil and worn by the streams that flow through the forest from
the hills they pull down the cows grazing or coming to drink in the
_nullahs_, which are filled with small trees and scrubs affording good
cover. A tiger, when it has killed, drags the carcase of its prey into
shade near water, eats a hearty meal of about eighty pounds of flesh,
drinks and then sleeps until it is ready to feed again. If disturbed it
retreats up the ravine to the forest.

So, beating for one with elephants here, the sportsmen place themselves
on their _howdah_-bearing animals between the jungle and the spot where
the tiger is known to be lying up, and the beater elephants enter the
scrub from the far side and shepherd him gently towards the guns.

Pointing to a distant line of tree-tops showing above the level plain
she said:

"There is the _nullah_ in which, about a mile farther on, a cow was
killed yesterday. I hope the tiger is still lying up in it. We'll soon
see."

They reached the ravine, which was twenty or thirty feet deep and
contained a little stream flowing through tangled scrub, and moved along
parallel to it and about a couple of hundred yards away. Presently the
girl pointed to a tall tree growing in it and a quarter of a mile ahead
of them. Its upper branches were bending under the weight of numbers of
foul-looking bald-headed vultures, squawking, huddled together, jostling
each other on their perches and pecking angrily at their neighbours with
irritable cries. Some circled in the air and occasionally swooped down
towards the ground only to rocket up again affrightedly to the sky; for
the tiger lay by its kill and resented the approach of any daring bird
that aspired to shar