That night, when dining with the Ainslies, our host told us of some curious happenings in tiger hunts around Alipur Duar. A former commandant was shooting one day on Dundora. Mrs Ainslie was in the howdah with him. A tiger burst out of the jungle before the beat. The officer fired and wounded it; but, hardly checking in its rush, it dashed forward, being missed by another bullet, and sprang on to the elephant's head. For a second it stood with its hind feet on Dundora's skull, its forepaws on the front rail of the howdah. The officer dropped his empty rifle and, seizing a second gun, shoved the muzzle against the tiger's chest and fired. The brute fell back off the elephant, dead. The whole incident had passed like a flash. The tiger had actually stood right over the _mahout_ crouching on the neck; but the man, although he found afterwards a long tear in the shoulder of his coat from the animal's claw, was not touched. On another occasion a tiger was shot in mid air as it sprang clean across a _nullah_, crumpled up and fell into the stream at the bottom. When the sportsmen on their elephants reached the edge of the bank, it was nowhere to be seen; and they concluded that it must have escaped down the _nullah_. But a month afterwards a second tiger was similarly shot in the middle of a spring and was seen from a distance to fall into a stream in the _nullah_, try to struggle out of the water and collapse beneath the surface. So the mystery of the first one's disappearance was solved. It must have been lying under water at the bottom of the _nullah_; but no one thought of looking for it there. Next morning I came out on to the veranda of the _dâk_ bungalow and surveyed with pride the six elephants drawn up in line before me. On the neck of each sat the _mahout_, who raised his hand to his forehead in a salaam. Then at the word of command the six trunks were lifted into the air and the elephants trumpeted in salute. As I looked at them I murmured inwardly: "This day a tiger must die!"