This was a grand scene, and I began to think there was some real pluck in Bisgaum after all, although there was a total want of discipline; but just as I felt inclined to applaud, the victorious elephant was seized with a sudden panic, and turning tail, he rushed along the bottom of the watercourse at the rate of 20 miles an hour, and disappeared in the thorny jungle below at a desperate pace that threatened immediate destruction to his staunch mahout. Leaving my men to arrange a litter with poles and cross-bars to carry the tiger home, I followed the course of Bisgaum upon Demoiselle, expecting every minute to see the body of his mahout stretched upon the ground. At length, after about half a mile passed in anxiety, we discovered Bisgaum and his mahout both safe upon an open plain; the latter torn and bleeding from countless scratches while rushing through the thorny jungle. On the following day the elephant's leg was much swollen, although the wounds appeared to be very slight. It is probable that a portion of the broken tooth remained in the flesh, as the leg festered, and became so bad that the elephant could not travel for nearly a fortnight afterwards. The mahouts are very obstinate, and insist upon native medicines, their famous lotion being a decoction of Mhowa blossoms, which in my opinion aggravated the inflammation of the wound. I returned Bisgaum to the Commissariat stables at Jubbulpur directly that he could march, as he was too uncontrollable for sporting purposes. Had any person been upon his back during his stampede he would have been swept off by the branches and killed; the mahout, sitting low upon his neck, could accommodate his body to avoid the boughs. The use of the elephant in India is so closely associated with tiger-shooting that I shall commence the next chapter with the tiger. CHAPTER V THE TIGER THERE is no animal that has exercised the imagination of mankind to the same degree as the tiger. It has been the personification of ferocity and unsparing cruelty. In Indian life the tiger is so closely associated with the elephant (as the latter is used in pursuit) that I select this animal in sequence to the former, from which in the ideas of sporting Indians it is almost inseparable. It is necessary to commence the description of the tiger with its birth. The female rarely produces more than three, and generally only two. These arrive at maturity in about two years.