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The next morning our carts arrived, and we unpacked (the salt, tea, and corkscrew had been forgotten). Afterwards we set out to explore, first the vegetable patches, then the meagre crops, and finally we were shown the dry river bed, the tiger’s high-road to Karwassa. We tracked him easily in the soft, fine, white sand; there were his three huge paws, and a fainter impression of the fourth. Also, there were marks of something dragged, and several dark brown splashes; it was here that he had carried off the wife of one of our present guides, who had looked on,—being powerless to save her.

Needless to say, we were filled with a raging thirst for the blood of this beast—Algy especially. He jawed, he bribed, he gesticulated, he held long conferences with the villagers, with Nuddoo the shikari—an active, leather-skinned man, with a cast in his left eye, who spoke English fluently, and wore a tiger charm. Algy accommodated himself to circumstances with astonishing facility. Most of the night we sat up in a machan, or platform in a tree, over a fat young buffalo, hoping to tempt the man-eater after dark. Subsequently Algy slept soundly on his native charpoy, breakfasted on milk and chuppatties, and sallied forth, gun on shoulder, to tramp miles over the surrounding country. He was indefatigable, and easily wore me out. As I frankly explained, I could not burn the candle at both ends, and sit curled up in a tree till two o’clock in the morning, and then walk down game that self-same afternoon. He never seemed to tire, and he left the champagne and whisky to us, and shot on milk or cold cocoa. His newly acquired Spartan taste declined our imported dainties (tinned and otherwise), and professed to prefer, in deference to our surroundings, a purely vegetable diet.