these attentions, and one morning my mahout informed me that she
wished, out of gratitude, to lift me into the howdah with her trunk. I
cannot conceive how he found this out, but I naturally was averse to
wounding the elephant's feelings by refusing the proffered courtesy,
though I should infinitely have preferred getting into the howdah in
the ordinary manner. The mahout, after the mysterious manner of his
kind, was giving his charge minute directions to be very careful with
me, when I suddenly felt myself seized by Chota Begum's trunk, lifted
into the air, and held upside down at the extreme length of that
member, for, it seemed to me, at least five minutes. Rupees and small
change rained from my pockets to the ground, cigar case, cigarette
case, matches and cartridge extractor streamed down to earth in
clattering showers from their abiding places; the blood rushed to my
head till I was on the very verge of apoplexy, and still Chota Begum,
remembering her instructions to be careful, held me up aloft, until
slowly, very slowly indeed, she lowered me into the howdah, dizzy and
stupid with blood to the head. The attention was well-meant, but it
was distinctly not one to be repeated indefinitely. In my youth there
was a popular song recounting the misfortunes of one Mr. Brown:
"Old man Brown, upside down,
With his legs sticking up in the air";
but I never imagined that I should share his unpleasant experiences.

I never enquired too minutely as to how the "kubber" of the
whereabouts of a tiger was obtained, but I have a strong suspicion
that unhappy goats played a part in it, and that they were tethered in
different parts of the jungle, for, as we all know, "the bleating of
the kid excites the tiger."

A tiger being thus located by his "kill," the long line of beating