walked for two hours with the trackers, hoping to come on some traces
of the brute or her mate, but without success."

And so on. Some of the deaths were horrible by reason of the eery
silence that marked them, others because of the mysterious movements
or amazing cunning of the tigers. The comic episodes it were not
seemly to dwell upon. But fifty-seven! Nothing for it now but a hurry
call to the Commissioner and the Maharaja for elephants and an army of
tiger-hunters, a mobilization of the best _shikaris_ in all India, for
a regular campaign against these beasts.

In fourteen days that army was on the spot, and I enlisted under the
banner of Colonel Howe of the Tenth Hussars. The staff was made up of
_shikaris_, and the beaters were of the rank and file. Maps were
called for and studied, scouts sent far and wide into the theater of
operations; native reports were sifted and their exaggerations
discounted with the skill of long practice.

[Illustration: LAST WALL OF DEFENSE

THE TIGER-HUNTING ELEPHANTS CLOSE THEIR RANKS TO RECEIVE THE CHARGE]

Tiger war is a science with axioms of its own. First of all come the
weather and the water-supply. It's useless to look for tigers in a dry
country, and it's useless to try and find them in the wet season, when
there is plenty of water everywhere. "Stripes" must be hunted in hot
weather, when great heat and the water distribution limit his
wanderings, and when forest leaves have fallen and the dense jungle is
thinned out.