CHAPTER XV.
TIGERS The fellahin who came to gossip in the winter evenings round our lamp and stove assured us there were tigers in the neighbouring mountain.
We, of course, did not accept the statement literally, but our English friend possessed the killing instinct, and held that any feline creatures which could masquerade in popular report as tigers would afford him better sport than he had yet enjoyed in Syria.

So when the settled weather came we went to look for them.
For my part I take pleasure in long expeditions with a gun, though nothing in the way of slaughter come of them.

My lack of keenness at the proper moment has been the scorn and the despair of native guides and hunters.

Once, in Egypt, at the inundation of the Nile, I had been rowed for miles by eager men, and had lain out an hour upon an islet among reeds, only to forget to fire when my adherents whispered as the duck flew over, because the sun was rising and the desert hills were blushing like the rose against a starry sky.

I had chased a solitary partridge a whole day among the rocks of En-gedi without the slightest prospect of success; and in the Jordan valley I had endured great hardships in pursuit of wild boar without seeing one.