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Updated: May 10, 2025
Fully expecting to see the tiger upon the man's body, I was standing ready in the howdah prepared for a careful shot. We arrived at the place. This was cleared of grass by the recent struggle, but instead of finding the man's body, we merely discovered his waist-cloth lying upon the ground a few yards distant.
The hunting-pieces, which ornament the interior of the arched recess on either side, are far superior to the colossal figures, and merit an exact description. Each of the beasts is guided by three riders, sitting along their backs, of whom the central one alone has the support of a saddle or howdah.
They had heard Jack's cries, and, wondering at the strange sound, had followed up in rear of the flying elephants. Their surprise was immense when they saw a white sahib in the howdah on the elephant's back.
Never can we forget the sight which presented itself to our astonished eyes when we went to our hotel-door at the appointed hour. There was the lady's camel, with a howdah on its back hung with curtains of damask and gold.
The veiled figure stood solitary against the gorgeous trappings of the kneeling elephant, but there were still two or three women in the howdah, as he could tell by their whispering. The widow's white garments made it probable that the one on the ground was the Rani, but what was the extraordinary stain which disfigured one end of her veil?
This Allah business was all right when the elephant waltzed, but when we got to the next block the beast began to stand on his hind feet, and pa and the houris rolled to the back end of the howdah, and were all piled in a heap, while I held on to the cloth of gold over the elephant's head.
A huge tiger, far larger than that which had fallen, had sprung up from the brushwood and leaped upon the elephant. With one forepaw he grasped the howdah, with the other clung to the elephant's shoulder, an inch or two only behind the leg of the mahout.
And then, as the band marched by, Rajah Suleiman's group collected in front of the great clump of trees left standing when a portion of the jungle had been cleared, and the huge elephants, now gorgeous with trappings, and each bearing its showy howdah, in which were seated the Rajah himself and his principal chiefs, responded to a final blast of the highly polished brass instruments and the thunderous roll of the drums by a simultaneous uneasy trumpeting of their own, with which were mingled the cries of the mahouts, who had to ply their sharp-pointed goads to keep their charges in subjection.
I saw a tiger leap right off the ground, and spring on to the rump of an elephant carrying young Sam S. The elephant proved staunch, and remained quite quiet, and Sam, turning round in his howdah, shot his assailant through the head.
It is asserted, indeed, by some that the actual crime was perpetrated by the attendant who occupied the back seat of the howdah; possibly Ismail Beg Khan, nephew of the Hamadani.
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