We hear that the sultan gives good prices, for those taken alive." "I have heard so," the old man said, "but none have been caught alive here, or by anyone in the villages round.

The sultan generally gets them from the royal forests, where none are allowed to shoot, save with his permission.

Sometimes, when there is a lack of them there, his hunters come into these districts, and catch them in pitfalls, and have nets and ropes with which the tigers are bound and taken away." A little crowd had, by this time, collected round them; and the women, when they heard that the strangers were shikarees, who had come up with the intention of killing tigers, brought them bowls of milk, cakes and other presents.
"I suppose, now that the sultan is away at war," Dick said, "his hunters do not come here for tigers ?" "We know nothing of his wars," a woman said.

"They take our sons from us, and we do not see them again.

We did hear a report that he had gone, with an army, to conquer Travancore.