Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/124

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112
LETTERS FROM INDIA.

over and having killed thirty-six tigers. When I wrote before, I wonder if I told you about a ‘man-eating’ tiger they were after, and which had killed twenty-six people in six weeks? It had been reported to Government as a terror to that part of the country; but the jungle was so difficult to enter; nobody could follow him. —— and the gentleman with him tried for four days in vain, and gave it up; but the other day a deputation of villagers went after them, and said it had carried off a boy that morning. Besides their own two elephants they could only get one and a mahout to follow them. They soon found the half-eaten body of the boy, and in time they came upon a tigress and two cubs. They wounded her, and she wounded each of their elephants and disappeared; but they shot a cub, and she charged again and was killed. They found in her lair’ the remains of fourteen bodies and a hunting spear. The most horrid part of the story was that the screams of the poor boy, who was fourteen years old, had been heard by the villager for a whole hour after he was seized. The tigress had evidently given him to the cubs to play with. Such a death to die!