demoralised then, when the moment was seen to be ripe by the basilisk eyes of the chowkidar, the contest was commenced, and in two minutes the Hector of the country-side was on his back, fairly and easily beaten.

Anger then displaced superstition in the champion's breast he demanded another trial forthwith. There was no more invocation or dustthrowing; the two were agrip again within the minute, and barely so when the sorcerer was heavily and decisively thrown. Then I had to rush in and rescue the chowkidar from the grasp of the victor: all the sorcery had been knocked out of him already, and but for my interference his life would have gone out after it.

73

CHAPTER IV.

THE SANTHAL REBELLION.

THE DAMUN-I-KOH-ST GEORGE AND THE YOUNG TIGERS-THE OUTBREAK-RECONNOITRING THE REBELS-A VOLUNTEER EXPEDITION

FTER about three years of this Kishnaghur life I went north, and well into the jungle of the Damun-i-koh (foot of the hill), lying along the Rajmahal hills, which at many points spread their spurs out almost to the banks of the Ganges. Jungle

was there in

every direction of my station, on

the hills tim

ber from foot

to crest, and on the allu

vial plains

below dense and tall grass admirably suited for tiger-cover. Tigers and panthers and bears were in the neighbourhood, and seen or heard by men from time to time: but it was only after two years spent in that country that I realised my burning desire to kill a tiger. I very nearly encountered one some time before this, while out after swamp partridge with two companions, but, fortunately perhaps for me, the encounter did not come off. The swamp partridge were driven for us out of heavy grass cover by a line of beaters. In one of our drives I took my stand in a clear patch in the middle of a strip of this grass, one of my colleagues standing on either hand outside. The beaters neared us, the partridges rose and flew our way, and when I had emptied both barrels and dropped a brace of birds, a roar broke from the cover close at hand, and there was a wild stampede of beaters, then silence. There was no mistaking that roar, which came from the grass in front of me not twenty yards away from where I stood. I had never heard a tiger give tongue before outside a zoo, and this was another tongue than that of the caged beast; but I knew what voice it was, and told myself that my chance had come at last. The tiger did not break, but turned back from the cover's edge, and I proposed to my fellow-shooters that we should pursue it straight away through the grass. We had no elephant at hand; we had no missile larger than No. 4 shot; but I argued that if we went three abreast, and

poured six charges, more or less, into the tiger, we should do for him. A few years later I should not have made this suggestion, but at that time I was wholly inexperienced, and, moreover, was spoiling for a tiger-shoot. However, my companions were unanimously of the other way of thinking. They would not bear me company in such an idiotic enterprise, and when this point was settled it was hopeless-if indeed it was not hopeless from the first moment to follow the tiger with any idea of seeing it. I commenced a return beat of the cover with a rallied line of beaters, but soon abandoned my tiger-chase, and reverted to the partridges.

For two years I possessed my soul in such patience as was attainable, making an occasional excursion across the Ganges into the Purneah country, where tigers were to be had by favoured shikaris, but where I had to be satisfied with one rhinoceros-hunt, in which I had not a chance of letting off my rifle, and the successful pursuit of some wild buffaloes. In and about those hills in whose shadows I lived there were tigers and panthers at my very door, but, save as above related, I never heard them, and none did I ever see.

Others in my immediate vicinity were more fortunate, and one of them had an experience that is, I imagine, unparalleled. Poor St George! He was an Irishman, characterised by the recklessness of his race in fullest measure. He would ride.

any horse and anywhere. He would face any danger without a moment's consideration of the

consequences, or even of the better method of meeting the risk he faced. He had several hairbreadth escapes during the short time that I knew him, and not long after we parted he rode haphazard to his death. That last adventure of his short life doubtless struck him as of a very ordinary character, by comparison with many more reckless things that he had accomplished without very serious accident. He and another came to a flooded valley, across which the waters, some feet in depth, swept like a mill-sluice; the road was submerged for half a mile, and on either side of it were cuttings some of considerable depth-into which it was quite possible to ride. St George's companion pointed out the danger of the passage, and urged that they should both return to the bungalow they had left. St George would not listen he had started to go to his home on the other side of that valley, and no argument could move him to change his purpose. He rode on alone, rode on into the flood, albeit his horse showed evident signs of terror; and before he had got half-way across, his horse reared and fell back upon him into one of the roadside excavations, and killed him in the fall. So was stilled as brave and generous a heart as ever beat.

And to this gallant soul the news was brought that a couple of tigers (young ones fully or nearly fully grown) had tumbled into a blind and shallow well close by. St George went off to the place at once, and there, sure enough, in the dry well,