The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-06-14
Probing Jungle for Tiger

We are out for tiger. The footprints o1 two have been noticed in the nullhas of the neighborhood, and we have kills out every night. But no cheerful news is brought in by the forest officers in the morning. So we give a wide berth to tha blocks where the tiger footprints are and we beat elsewhere. The game is simpse, says a correspondent of the London Chronicle. You get upon a small platform in a tree with somewhat clear space in front of you and the beaters draw off and line up about mile away Then with shouts and yells they move forward to- ward you. Faint over the trees at first comes their din, but in your immediate neighborhood there is silence. Your part is to keep still, to watch and listen and wait for the time and opportunity to kill The excitement is intense. You hear your heart beat A leathery teak leaf falls rustling to the ground, bough cracks tree shudders. The least noise is shar| pened as though it came to your ear1 through a microphone.
 Presently another kind of noise comes- the noise of hurrying feet among the brittle leaves, and you see things movings coming stealthfly toward you. Peacocka glide from cover to cover, jungle fowl rush about in timorous confusion. They rush across the open space and are gones A heavier rustic announces the monkeys funny, bounding things, with their long tails, jumping and waiting, waiting and jumping, scurrying after their tiny lag~ gards, and spurring them on. They, toou disappear behind. But something bigger and blacker comes waggling amid the bamboo. It rises every now and again and sways its head from side to side. There is big yell from far behind it, and 1t comes running on. It stops again. Rifles are up. Poor Teddy will never pass. The being that is in him is to bs released for another reincarnation. Al noise more wicked than the yell of the hundred beaters fills the jungle. Another and Teddy has ceased to wonder what the annoying row is all about. In an in- stant there is a crashing like cavalry charge among the bamboo, and a herd of sambhar deer rush past. Among them is one of proud antlered head, and he, too. is broken and crushed by the same wicked bang. The beaters come up and burst into a babel of confused noise. The sun is very hot. and we come down and fling ourselves into the snade
 Next day there was a difference A peacock rose up from the bush well ahead and perched on a tree; the mon- keys coughed as they came on. The sworn enemies of the terror of the jungle were telling every one whom it might concern that he was on the move. Then we saw him. The first glimpse of a tiger free in the jungle is one of the most ez. hiliarating of experiences. He cznes amongst the bamboos with regal leisure. erect, graceful imperious. He seep,s but half-awake, and If you are very fast-iious you see the one touch of vulgarity about him in his yawn He occasionally shows an irritated impatience when the chorus of the beat swells. and hes then moves some paces quickly, as though he would break into a run. But his whole mien seems to resent hurry. His ferocity sleeps in his grace. There are to be a few seconds of fierce passion and pain when the jungle is to be filled with his roars after the rifles of the sahibs havo spoken. But that is forgotten, and tha tiger lives in ones memory as the con4 scious tyrant of the jungle beautiful fon the eye to look upon.