elephants, riderless except for their mahouts, goes crashing through
the burnt-up jungle-growth, until a trumpeting from one of the
elephants announces the neighbourhood of "stripes," for an elephant
has an abnormally keen sense of smell. The various guns are posted on
their elephants in any open spot where a good view of the beast can be
obtained when he breaks cover. I have explained elsewhere how I
personally always preferred an ordinary shot-gun loaded with a lead
ball, to a rifle for either tigers or bears. The reason being that
both these animals are usually shot at very close quarters whilst they
are moving rapidly. Time is lost in getting the sights of a rifle on
to a swift-moving objective, and there is so little time to lose, for
it is most inadvisable to wound a tiger without killing him; whereas
with a shot-gun one simply raises it, looks down the barrels and fires
as one would do at a rabbit, and a solid lead bullet has enormous
stopping power. I took with me daily in the howdah one shot-gun loaded
with ball, another with No. 5 shot for birds, an Express rifle, and
one of the Maharajah's terrific 4-bore elephant-rifles; this latter's
charge was 14-1/2 drachms of black powder; the kick seemed to break
every bone in one's shoulder, and I was frightened to death every time
that I fired it off.

On that Assam shoot I was quite extraordinarily lucky, for on the very
first day the beating elephants announced the presence of a tiger by
trumpeting almost at once, and suddenly, with a roar, a great streak
of orange and black leaped into the sunlight from the jungle straight
in front of me. The tiger came straight for my elephant, who stood
firm as a rock, and I waited with the smooth-bore till he got within
twenty feet of me and I knew that I could not possibly miss him, and
then fired at his shoulder. The tiger fell dead. This was a very easy
shot, but it did me great service with my mahout. These men, perched