almost hysterical catch to the laugh of more than

one man.

ever seen.

This was the most sporting tiger-drive that I have The fact that no tiger was seen, and that possibly no tiger was near us, does not in any way detract from the sport. We all believed that the tiger was there: the guns thought that a tiger which was aware of their presence was being forced to come towards them; and the beaters felt that they were impelling forward an animal whose desire was to charge back through their ranks. If the drive had ended by a tiger being shot, it would not in the slightest degree have added to the excitement that marked the duration of the drive. I have shot a tiger in a drive that had not a tenth of the interest of this day. Accompanied only by Malays, I have occasionally had to follow wounded tigers on foot through nasty country. As I have said above, I have heard the "selawat" answered in royal style; but nowhere else have I seen such an intensity of feeling and excitement. With this the number of men employed had a great deal to do. It is seldom that one requisitions more than thirty or forty beaters, whereas in this case fully two hundred men were engaged. The amount of magnetic feeling, where the excitement was communicated from unseen unit to unseen unit throughout the forest, was enormous, and the air vibrated to the unuttered excitement of the men.

It is in a drive where a line of men armed only with spears advances thus determinedly upon a tiger, that you realise how powerful a brute it is that they are assailing. From the height of a seat in a

tree or an elephant's back you may shoot tigers with safety; but when you come down to the ground, and either advance on foot to meet the tiger or wait on foot for it to be driven up, the feeling comes home to you of the marvellous strength and activity that are combined in that beautiful frame. It may be within a few yards of you, perhaps, seeing all that you do, and itself unseen. It can steal noiselessly through the forest where you can only move with crackling of leaves and breaking of twigs. You know that, when the occasion comes, that wonderful lithe body can come with lightning speed through the thick-tangled growth that hampers and impedes your every movement. Finally, you know that at close quarters a man is as helpless as a child against the overpowering weight and strength of an animal that kills an ox at a blow.

When you are on the ground following up or waiting for a tiger, you realise all this with some vividness. And in this connection I would advance the theory that the curious horror which some people have of cats is not, as is sometimes said, a sixth sense, but merely an instinctive terror, inherited from simian ancestors, of the feline tribe. The instinct has, I suggest, died out in the majority of cases, but exists in occasional individuals in the same manner that simian tricks of raising the ears or eyebrows are sometimes to be seen.

But whatever the average person's feelings may be regarding the race of cats, there is little doubt that almost every one has a peculiar sensation of the almost god-like beauty, power, activity, and strength

of a tiger. A tiger will overawe and make conscious of his inferiority a man who would be unaffected by the bulk of an elephant. The feeling is, however, elusive of description, and I can perhaps best explain it in the words of a most charming French gentleman (now dead, alas!) who was once manager of a great tin-mining company in Perak. I well remember his coming into the Tapah messroom where the Europeans of the district used in those days to take their meals. We had just finished lunch when he entered in a state of tremendous excitement. Walking alone and unarmed along an unfrequented bridle-path through the forest, he had walked almost on to a tiger. He gave us a most vivid narrative of the encounter: how the tiger had been lying down concealed in some long lalang grass beside the path; how he was within ten yards of it before he saw it; how then it rose and looked at him; how it yawned at him; how it then walked slowly across the path in front of him, and then stopped and looked at him, again yawning; and how it then deliberately walked away into the forest, whose depths finally hid it from view. I cannot attempt to imitate the beautiful and forcible diction that Monsieur C. had at his command, for the plain facts that I have thrown into a single sentence received from the narrator a majesty of style and a wealth of colouring and detail that cannot be reproduced on paper.

Some one asked him whether it was a big tiger. It is his answer that illustrates my meaning.

"Well, Messieurs, I cannot say if he is a big tiger. My eyes see that he is big; but I cannot say how big

I see him to be; and if I say how big, it is perhaps that I tell you a lie. But I can tell you, Messieurs, how big I feel him to be, and I can tell you the truth. When he is standing there in front of me, I tell you that I feel he is not less than thir-r-ty feet high."

225

A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE.

ONE of the charms of shooting is that one's wanderings with a gun, be it rifle or smooth-bore, generally take one into the remoter parts of a district where the Malays are still almost unaffected by the progress of civilisation, and where they live very much as their fathers lived before the days of roads and railways. When one rests for a few minutes, or hours, or for a night, in a village, not only does one see the simple and natural side of Malay life, but has a glimpse of the more intimate side; and one becomes acquainted, in a casual way, with much that one would never learn in an official visit. There is something in a gun that is like the incognito of royalty, it shows that the bearer is not on duty; and when a man is in a stained and disreputable old shooting-suit, it is easy for him to forget, and to persuade others to forget, that he is the Judge or the District Officer.

When you listen to Malays talking naturally among themselves, the thing that will most puzzle you will often be the apparent inconsequence of the remarks, the looseness of the argument, and its curious inherent tendency to drift into yet further vagueness. It will not be until you are thoroughly acquainted with the

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