ave escaped if they
could. It is only when brought to bay, or very hard pressed, or in
defence of its young, that a tiger or tigress displays its native
ferocity. At such a moment indeed, nothing gives a better idea of
savage determined fury and fiendish rage. With ears thrown back, brows
contracted, mouth open, and glaring yellow eyes scintillating with
fury, the cruel claws plucking at the earth, the ridgy hairs on the
back stiff and erect as bristles, and the lithe lissome body quivering
in every muscle and fibre with wrath and hate, the beast comes down to
the charge with a defiant roar, which makes the pulse bound and the
breath come short and quick. It requires all a man's nerve and
coolness, to enable him to make steady shooting.

Roused to fury by a wound, I have seen tigers wheel round with amazing
swiftness, and dash headlong, roaring dreadfully as they charged, full
upon the nearest elephant, scattering the line and lacerating the poor
creature on whose flanks or head they may have fastened, their whole
aspect betokening pitiless ferocity and fiendish rage.

Even in death they do not forget their savage instincts. I knew of one
case in which a seemingly dead tiger inflicted a fearful wound upon an
elephant that had trodden on what appeared to be his inanimate
carcase. Another elephant, that attacked and all but trampled a tiger
to death, was severely bitten under one of the toe-nails. The wound
mortified, and the unfortunate beast died in about a week after its
infliction. Another monster, severely wounded, fell into a pool of
water, and seized hold with its jaws of a hard knot of wood that was
floating about. In its death agony, it made its powerful teeth meet in
the hard wood, and not until it was being cut up, and we had divided
the muscles of the jaws, could we extricate the wood from that
formidable clench. In rage and fury, and mad with pain, the wounded
tiger will often turn round and savagely bite the wound that causes
its agony, and they very often bite their paws and shoulders, and tear
the grass and earth around them.

A tiger wounded in the spine, however, is the most exciting spectacle.
Paralysed in the limbs, he wheels round, roaring and biting at
everything within his reach. In 1874 I shot one in the spine, and
watched his furious movements for some time before I put him out of
his misery. I threw him a pad from one of the elephants, and the way
he tore and gnawed it gave me some faint idea