Ladies in the Field (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...to make it possible for my sister and myself to get along. We at length reached a rock, fifteen or twenty feet in height, on the summit of which Mothi Singh placed us, and past which the tiger would be driven. I was to have first shot. The beaters, three hundred or four hundred in number, now began their work, shouting, beating drums and tom-toms, blowing bugles, firing blank cartridges, and steadily pressing forward in our direction. We, of course, maintained the most profound silence, and watched with the deepest interest for the appearance of the tiger. As we waited, all sorts of creatures, scared by the beaters, passed us--pig and deer, pea-fowl and jungle fowl, the majestic sambhur, and the pretty nilghai, not to mention foxes and jackals, went by within shot, but for to-day, at anyrate, they were safe. At last came the tiger. He advanced like an enormous cat, now crouching upon the ground, now crawling forward, now turning round to try and discover the meaning of the unwonted noise behind him. When he was about eighty yards from us I fired and hit him on the shoulder; then the others fired, and the tiger bolted. At this moment Hera Sahib, the commander-in-chief of the Rewa army, and who had been directing "the beat," came up on an elephant, and, as he had brought with him a spare elephant, my husband mounted the latter, and they went off together in search of the tiger, leaving us upon the rock. Two hours later they came upon the wounded tiger hiding in the jungle. The moment he saw that he was discovered, he charged Hera Sahib's elephant, and the latter, being a young animal, bolted. The tiger then turned and charged the elephant my husband was riding, which stood his ground. The tiger, charged underneath the elephant, but fortunately my husband got a snap-shot at him and rolled him over. He crept into the jungle again, however, but was now past serious resistance, and although he made a brave attempt to reach his enemies, he was easily...