Part 7 (1/2)
Men whose names I did not know welcomed me with the cordiality of old friends and made me and my train comfortable for the night. I found that I was known to most by reputation as the lunatic who had walked up to a notorious rogue elephant with only a camera in his hand. All gladly aided me in my venture; for I learned that the brute I was pursuing was infamous throughout the district. Everyone had a tale to tell of him, and never to his credit. On one garden he had entered the coolies'
village and, finding a native baby in his path, had picked it up in his trunk and hurled it on to the roof of a hut. Alarmed by its cries the parents had rushed out only to be met and trampled to death by the murderous brute. On another garden the manager and a friend were strolling in the dusk along a road within two hundred yards of the bungalow. Smoking and chatting, they were all unconscious of the fact that this rogue was stalking silently towards them intent on murder.
Suddenly the planter's terrier saw it and rushed barking at it.
Frightened as all elephants are of dogs, the animal turned off the road and plunged in among the tea bushes; and it was only then that his intended victims perceived him. My bullets were by no means the first that he had received. He had been shot at and wounded over and over again. One planter advised me, if I eventually succeeded in killing him, to exploit his body as a lead mine.
Hope springs eternal in the sportsman's breast; and day after day I set out at dawn cheered by the expectation that surely this day must bring the chase to a successful conclusion. As we started at five or six o'clock each morning and kept on the move until 6 p.m., we must have covered altogether well over two hundred miles in the pursuit, as we averaged a mile and a half in the hour. The rogue seemed to know that we were on his track and changed his direction frequently. Strange were the sights I saw and varied the wild jungles we traversed. Sometimes for hours we pushed our way through brakes of tough cane. Sometimes we pa.s.sed for miles under huge trees in gra.s.sy land. Once in the forest Khartoum stopped short so suddenly that I was nearly thrown off her pad.
As she backed away the _mahout_ pointed to a great snake twelve or thirteen feet long wriggling away from almost under her forelegs. The glimpses I got of it showed it to be the terrible king-cobra.
For the first four days of the chase we had found no droppings left by the fleeing elephant. Then we came on some, small, hard and black with coagulated blood. And only on the sixth day did we discover traces of where he had begun to eat again. And one morning we pa.s.sed a patch of cultivation in the jungle and a peasant who told us that at daybreak he had found a lame single-tusker elephant feeding on his crops. When the sun rose it moved on again without discovering the man.
At last on the twelfth day since our first encounter I was obliged to give up the chase. We found his trail leading across the wide and rapid river, the Torsa, which pours down its flood from the mountains of Bhutan. My men and animals were worn out by the unceasing pursuit.
Although the former suffered less than I did from the want of food, for every village supplied their wants and I had to depend on the kind charity of the planters, yet the irregular meals and the strain told on them. They were not spurred on by the same eagerness to kill the rogue as I. But greatly disappointed as I was at being unable to compa.s.s his death, yet I thought that at least we had rid our jungles of his dangerous presence; so, sadly and reluctantly, I yielded to my followers' entreaties and turned our elephants' heads towards home.
We really had deserved better fortune. We had done our best to kill the rogue, and nothing but the most astonis.h.i.+ng fortune had saved him. One bullet out of the many half an inch to one side or the other would have given us the victory. And we had shot calmly and steadily. I was sure that not one of our bullets had missed him, which of course was not astonis.h.i.+ng, as they had all been fired at the closest range. Yet I have seen a man miss a fourteen-hand _sambhur_ at ten yards. But with this elephant I knew that every shot had struck. I have never heard of so long and continuous a pursuit of one animal as ours had been. But the fact remained that with ten solid bullets from my heavy rifle, and seven from the Lee-Enfields, the brute still lived to mock us, and to do worse. For three weeks from the day when we ended the chase on the banks of the Torsa the rogue was back again in our jungles and attacked the tame elephants of an Indian Civil Servant near Buxa Road Station.
Needless to say, I was off again after him the moment I heard of this fresh outrage. But all in vain. And a few months afterwards while I was lying dangerously ill in Buxa the brute surprised a Bhuttia and his wife in the jungle three miles from Santrabari and trampled the woman to death; and, for aught I know, still carrying our bullets he yet lives to terrorise the forest. May we meet again! And yet, when I think how narrowly I escaped an agonising death under his terrible feet, I should perhaps be thankful that the chances of our meeting are small; for hundreds of miles of India now divide us.
It is fortunate that in sudden danger one has not time to think; for if, in the nerve-trying moment when a man stands facing the onrush of a charging elephant, a vivid imagination painted to his eyes the awful fate in store for him should the bullet fail to strike home, the rifle would drop from his shaking fingers. But though in antic.i.p.ation the heart beats quickly and the breath comes fast, yet when the instant of danger comes the nerves turn to steel and the hand never falters. A tiger is not always a formidable foe; and one generally meets him on advantageous terms. But the wild elephant's charge must be met on ground of his own choosing; and the odds are perhaps in his favour. Yet the man who has once stopped him in his headlong rush will long to do battle with his kind again; and the recollections of the peril escaped acts only as a spur.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Footprints.
CHAPTER VIII
IN TIGER LAND
The tiger in India--His reputation--Wounded tigers--Man-eaters--Game killers and cattle thieves--A tiger's residence--Chance meetings--Methods of tiger hunting--Beating with elephants--Sitting up--A sportsman's patience--The charm of a night watch--A cautious beast--A night over a kill--An unexpected visitor--A tantalising tiger--A tiger at Asirgarh--A chance shot--Buffaloes as trackers--Panthers--The wrong prey--A beat for tiger--The Colonel wounds a tiger--A night march--An elusive quarry--A successful beat--A watery grave--Skinning a tiger.
Would any book on India be complete without a tiger in it? Although he is found in many other Asiatic countries--in China they shoot him in caves, in Corea there is a whole militia raised to deal with him--yet in the popular mind the tiger is particularly a.s.sociated with Hindustan. No distinguished visitor would consider himself properly entertained if one were not provided for him to shoot. The young subaltern in England pines for the day to come when he will be ordered to India and have his chance to face the striped beast in his native jungle.
The usual conception of the tiger is an animal of infinite cunning, cruelty and ferocity. Cunning he certainly is; but his reputation for ferocity and courage is hardly deserved. He is really rather a harmless and timid creature, of a decidedly shy and retiring disposition, avoiding, rather than courting, notoriety. Sanderson, one of the greatest authorities on sport in India, argues that the tiger is actually a public benefactor, inasmuch as he kills off old and sick cattle which, since the pious Hindu would not put them to death, would otherwise linger on spreading disease among the herds. Natives, near whose village a tiger takes up his residence, betray no fear of him and go about their daily avocations in his vicinity as indifferently as if he did not exist. I have seen women drawing water from a stream not a hundred yards from the spot where half an hour later I drove a tiger from his lair. For, except in rare cases, these animals prefer to give man a wide berth, and, when stumbled upon accidentally, will usually effect a rapid retreat if they can. Of course a wounded tiger followed up is an exceedingly dangerous foe. Furious with pain, exhausted and in agony, he will turn savagely on his pursuers; and then a quick eye and steady rifle are needed to check him in his fierce charge. Even shot through the heart he may retain sufficient vitality to reach and maul his aggressor, then perhaps fall dead on his mangled victim without killing him outright. But few men wounded by a tiger ever recover; for the shock and the blood-poisoning set up by the unclean claws of the carrion feeder are almost invariably fatal.
The man-eater is, fortunately, rare; for, having once learned how easy a prey human beings prove, he is apt to devote himself too exclusively to them; and the total of his victims soon mounts up into the hundreds. The man-eater is made, not born. Sometimes it is an old beast no longer agile enough to surprise the animals of the forest or even bring down a stray cow, but still supple enough to spring upon some unwary wood-cutter or villager. Natives believe that human flesh disagrees with a tiger's digestion, and point in proof to the mangy state of most man-eaters' hides. But the reason of this is that the animal is generally old or sick. Sometimes, however, the tiger who takes to the slaughter of human beings is a young and vigorous beast. He has probably some time or other been disturbed over a kill or foiled in an attempt to carry off cattle by some rashly courageous individual, and in anger or the desperation of hunger has slain the intruder. Finding that after all man is not a formidable enemy and quite palatable, he continues to prey on him and in time almost devastates a whole district. He becomes a public character and attracts more attention than he likes. Government gazettes honour him with a notice proclaiming him. A price is set on his head. White men come from all sides to hunt him down; and the unfortunate animal knows no peace until a lucky bullet lays him low.
Scared natives regard him as an evil spirit and set up altars to him.
And yet it is extraordinary how indifferent the inhabitants of a district ravaged by a man-eater become to his presence. I have seen a postman jog-trotting along night after night on a road on which two men had been killed and eaten by a tiger the week before. The man's ridiculous little spear and bells would have been no protection against the Striped Death springing on him out of the darkness; but he had his living to make. His orders were to carry the mail-bag along that stretch of road every night; so with true Oriental fatalism he jogged on, seemingly indifferent to the chances of an unlucky meeting.
The man-eater being an exception, tigers may be cla.s.sified as game slayers and cattle killers. Those haunting a jungle where _sambhur_, _cheetul_, pig and small antelopes abound take their toll of them. A monkey is quite a delicate morsel, if they can catch an unwary _bunder_ on the ground or fetch him from a low bough by an unexpected spring.
Those that take up their residence in cultivated country usually prey on the cattle grazing in the scrub jungle near the villages. A tiger generally rules over a stretch of ground about five miles square and keeps strictly within his own domain. Any intruder of his own s.e.x is speedily ejected. But it is a curious fact that when a tiger is shot, another quickly appears and takes up his abode in the defunct animal's dominions. A certain patch of jungle, a particular _nullah_, may be the residence of a tiger which is known to be the only one for miles round.
But if he is killed his habitat is almost certain of another striped tenant very soon.
The game slayer is not often seen, living as he does in the heart of the jungle and prowling mostly by night. The cattle lifter levies contributions from the villages in his district in turn, usually killing a cow every two or three days. He takes up his residence for the time being near the carca.s.s in some shady spot close to water. He eats about sixty or eighty pounds of beef at his first meal, goes to drink and lies up during the day to digest his heavy meal, returning at night to feed again. If any villager happens to blunder in on his privacy during his siesta, he gives a low, warning growl which usually suffices to scare the intruder off. The natives pay little heed to him and go about their usual pursuits without heeding his proximity.
On my first introduction to the jungle--it was in the Central Provinces years ago--I had a wholesome respect for tigers. When I learned that one lived in the particular part of the forest where I went shooting, I used to feel anything but comfortable as I wandered about in search of _sambhur_. I marvelled at the unconcerned way in which even women and children traversed this jungle from village to village. One day I climbed down into a deep, narrow ravine in the hope of finding a stag sheltering in it from the unpleasantly hot sun. Suddenly from a clump of bushes above my head came a deep ”Wough! wough!” like the bark of a great dog; and a tiger crashed out of it and bounded up and over the edge of the _nullah_. I swung my rifle round; but he was out of sight before the b.u.t.t touched my shoulder. My _s.h.i.+karee_ (native hunter) cried ”Bagh! Bagh! (A tiger! a tiger!)” and rushed up past me after the vanished animal. Rather unwillingly I clambered up too; and I was decidedly relieved when, on emerging from the ravine, I found that the ground was covered with gra.s.s six feet high, so that pursuit of the tiger was hopeless. However, on calmly considering the matter afterwards, I came to the conclusion that the beast was even more afraid of me than I of him. So I devoted much time and attention to trying to meet him again. Many a night did I sit up for him over a cow tied up as a bait. Time after time I followed his footprints by day and tried to walk him up near the carca.s.s of some deer he had killed and half-eaten.
But never again did I see him.
A few months ago in the Kanera Forests I was wandering about one afternoon, shot-gun in hand, in search of jungle fowl for the pot, about half a mile from the Government _dak_ bungalow--or rest-house--in which I was staying. I was making my way along a narrow path. Just as I reached a spot where it came out on a small clearing in the forest, I heard some heavy animal forcing its way through the undergrowth about forty yards to my left. I stepped out into the open and looked in the direction from whence came the sound, which stopped as soon as I appeared. I stood still for a couple of minutes. Suddenly a tiger, which had evidently been watching me, gave a deep roar and crashed off through the thick jungle. It was useless to try to follow him up even if I had had a rifle instead of a shot-gun. The setting sun warned me that I must hurry home; so I continued on my way. Two hundred yards further on the path led down into a narrow _nullah_ with steep banks. Here I found the fresh prints of the tiger's paws in the mud, the water just oozing into them. Had I come along a few minutes earlier we would have met face to face in the narrow way; and the chances were that, in his hurry to escape, he would have charged me and knocked me down. And a blow from a tiger's paw is not a caress to be courted. But the two incidents will show that these animals are generally anxious to avoid men.
Native _s.h.i.+karees_ frequently sit up over water for tigers; but European sportsmen usually adopt one of the three following methods. The first and most effective is to shoot them from elephants; but this does not often fall to the lot of the average man. I was fortunate in having the opportunity in Buxa. The second method is to mark down where the animal is lying up after a kill and have him driven by a line of beaters to the spot where the sportsman is concealed.
In the Central Provinces I went out one day with a friend who had arranged such a beat for a tiger which had killed a cow tied up as a bait for him near a village. After a ten miles' drive we reached this village; and, having had an early start, we breakfasted under a tree on a hillock just above a long _nullah_ which seamed the bare, brown fields with a winding line of green. Below us the hundred and sixty coolies collected as beaters squatted and smoked until the Sahibs were ready.