Part 24

Here is a cutting from a friendly review of a recent book in the Westminster Gazette of 5th December 1908.

"Our author, we have said, got no lions. Other game came to him in plenty, but the lions always evaded his gun. Yet he gives us a living picture of a lion hunt, when the harried animal, which has been trying to slink off, at last turns to bay and determines on the fight to a finish:

"'Death is the only possible conclusion.

"'Broken limbs, broken jaws, a body raked from end to end, lungs pierced through and through, entrails torn and protruding--none of these count. It must be death--instant and utter for the lion, or down goes the man, mauled by septic claws and fetid teeth, crushed and crunched, and poisoned afterwards to make doubly sure. Such are the habits of this cowardly and wicked animal.'"

Since Goldsmith described how

"The dog, to gain his private ends, Went mad, and bit the man,"

there has been nothing to equal the humour of this imputed wickedness. A simple person might suppose that the lion paused to spit in poison, or at least deliberately poisoned his teeth and claws; whereas, of course, he merely does not clean them properly. Having to live in the backwoods of Africa, and support himself somehow, he cannot command the toilet requisites of Belgravia. Is not that wicked? And his cowardice, in not standing to be shot at, is uncommonly like that of the Boers. Why should he not avoid the enemy's fire?

In truth, it is plain that the author, as indeed he tells us, was not describing what he saw, but repeating what he was told. His words are not a "living picture," but, if he will allow me to say it, a bloody blur, which no more gives an idea of the real fight than the hospital beds give an idea of a battle. In the supreme hour of conflict, both sides "see red," but not in that way. Neither thinks of wounds. There seems to be no time for that. The only thought is how to kill; and in the glad excitement the manifold details of life and all its conventions, which seem so real in cold blood, are crumpled up like stage properties in a conflagration; and all seems fair in war, and all is fair; and the issue lies with the God of battles, and not with the elderly lawyers at The Hague or anywhere else.

So much the worse is it then for the lions, and so much the worse for any man or nation found unready, unprepared. Ah, if we could only regulate battles like law-courts, how different the world would be! But God knows best. It somehow must be better as it is.

If this Englishman or any other man would meet the lion on equal terms, as knight met knight in the Middle Ages, I am sure there is not a lion, young or old, in Africa, there is not a tiger in India or Burma, that would not accept the challenge with pleasure. As the challenged party would have the choice of weapons, and a sportsman could not object to fair-play, we may be sure that "Nature's weapons" would be the lion's choice, and the victory swift and certain for the lion, even if it rained Englishmen, to say nothing of other people.

This is an old, old story. Hercules himself had to use a club and poisoned arrows. It is by tools and co-operation that we master the other beasts. The cats are a particularly easy conquest, as they are bigoted individualists. But let us not add insult to injury, and call them cowardly because they dodge us. When next our author is at Lucerne, let him step aside into the garden there and look at Thorwaldsen's lion, cut in the living rock, and see whether it does not lift his thoughts above the shambles. The wounded lion he described, according to the reviewer, was "trying to slink off." Thorwaldsen shows what it was seeking to die in peace. Why chase and torture him more? To get his hide? The lion-hunter, whoever he was, although he risked his life gratuitously, was like a silly child pulling a cat's tail and a thoughtlessly cruel child, for this big cat was in mortal agony.

Machinery-murder, for beasts of every kind, including men, is now a fact inevitable, and, like everything inevitable, it bears a blessing in it, if only we submit to the will of the Almighty, and recognise what He has brought to pass. The blessing latent in this apparent affliction, perhaps, is that we may cease to admire the business of slaughter; and if so, what a stream of blessings may flow from that one.

"For ever since historian writ, And ever since a bard could sing, Doth each exalt with all his wit The noble art of murdering."

3. KILLING TIGERS AND APES

I have just been invited to invest in an electric apparatus, to be installed upon the tree one sits in, when waiting over a "kill" for the return of the tiger. The difficulty at present is to see to shoot in the dark; and this invention enables you to press a button and flood the place with electric light. If then you are moderately quick, you can shoot the beast while he is blinking at the light, as easily as if it were day. You are as safe in the tree as in a bedroom and very nearly as comfortable on your platform. You can sleep there all night--four nights out of five at the least--when nothing happens. When the great night comes, that is to say, when the tiger comes, even then you need not lose more sleep than most passengers do in a sleeping carriage on a railway. The swing of the tree in the breeze and the rustling of the leaves make your platform a superlatively soothing bed; and as you lie back and look up at the drifting clouds, and the moon or the stars, you can feel you have the excitements of savage life, combined with all the comforts of Charing Cross; for at your side is a good fellow, willing, for a consideration, to keep watch for the tiger, better than you possibly could, and to watch you, too, and take care that, in waiting, you do not roll over on your back and snore, and finally wake you when it comes. What a dramatic whisper it is in your ear--"Tiger come! Tiger come!" Nothing in any theatre can equal it! Do not be in too big a hurry to fire. There is no need to hurry, if you take care to make no noise at all, and it is well to take time to waken thoroughly, so as to aim your best. If then you fire and kill, you are contented for an hour or two. There might then even be a little danger for you, if you had made a bargain with the Devil like Faust's (see Goethe's text, Scene IV)--

"If e'er you find me quite content, And bidding time stand still, To Hell you then can have me sent, And bind me as you will!"

But even in that case, the danger would be momentary. "Another" and "another" you would want; and the Devil himself could not provide them--at any rate in Burma, where the many ineffectual days and nights become intolerable, unless you have something else to do as well.

Accordingly it is the Forest officers, whose work is in the woods, who can hunt to most advantage. There was one I knew who killed many scores of tigers, mostly by "sitting up over a kill," in the manner described. I doubt if he knew the exact figure himself. It must have been over a hundred. Besides the tigers, the same man killed perhaps every kind of wild beast in the Burman forests, except only the big ape.

Here, it may be noted, for the information of those who deny the existence of that animal on the Continent, that the writer knew a Mr Bruce, Deputy Conservator of Forests, and a completely credible man, who found his camp-followers attacked by a big ape. To save human life, he shot it, and on laying out the corpse he found it little smaller than the orang-outang. This was in the Upper Chindwin, in the north of Burma; and the villagers, who professed to know it well, called it the "wild man of the woods," which is what orang-outang means in the Malay language.

"I would have done something else," said the man of many trophies to me. "I would not have shot the big ape--at least not within many years past. I once did shoot a monkey in a tree. I used small shot that lacerated its bowels. The poor little beast sat on the bough and held its protruding entrails in its hand and looked at me. I felt as if it was asking me 'Why did you do that?' I swore I'd never kill a monkey again, and never did, and never will."

This reminds one of the common report, which one would like to believe, that a great man of science is occasionally haunted by the ghosts of the apes he has slain. The generous man is prone to remorse. But it is vain. "You can't cure the wounds your arrow has made by merely unbending your bow."

What most needs to be told, however, for it is least suspected, is that with modern weapons and a little skill and nerve, the hunter never has to face much danger. Even accidents are rare, and mostly avoidable. There is little to fear, except monotony and malaria; and green mosquito-nets have long been available for hunters to diminish the malaria. How to diminish the monotony is a problem that remains unsolved.

In India there is less of it--I mean of the monotony. The patchiness of the forests makes the killing of cats more expeditious in India than in Burma. The poor labourers who "beat" have a little involuntary excitement. There is some real danger for them; but for nobody else. The potentates aloft, on elephants or other elevations, waiting to pull triggers, which is their function, are as safe as if they were on the bridge of a battleship, bombarding whales. The ladies could do it equally well; or the ladies' maids. The expense is multiplied a hundred or a thousand times, to increase the amusement; and that is the fashionable Indian tiger-hunting. It differs from ordinary hunting as the Spanish bull-ring differs from the slaughter-house; but, as there is room for thousands to sit in safety round the Spanish circus, and a display of courage and agility by the leading actors, a Spaniard might reasonably argue that his sort of sport was superior in every way. It certainly does supply more fun for the money.

4. THE HAPPY HUNTER

The happiest huntsman I ever heard of was a fat little Frenchman, who was a guest in a shooting-box in the Highlands of Scotland. His host was some ex-royalty; and one morning the whole crowd were going to stalk the deer, except our hero, who stood watching their departure as cheerily as he could. "Take a gun and potter about yourself near the house," was the parting shout to him; and after a little, finding time begin to drag, he remembered the kindly-meant advice, and shouldered a gun and went off alone.

At dinner-time, he could hardly contain himself till the others had finished telling their doings; and when at last his hints had made them curious, and they asked what sport he had had, he cried: "Ah, my friends, smaller, but better than yours. Just over the top of the first hillock (petite colline), on the edge of the moor, I met a glorious herd of Scottish chamois, magnificent wild sheep (moutons sauvages), and killed half-a-dozen of them before they escaped. They must have watched you all go to a distance and felt safe. I completely surprised them."

It was only the conventions of sport that made the fat little man ridiculous. The deer were no more wild animals than the sheep. If the deer-stalkers were real hunters, so was he. In danger and in joy, they were the same.

They tell me that this story is well-known in London. That was to be expected. It was too good not to tell. But I heard it in 1894, in the north, from a parish clergyman of superior character, who located it in ground adjacent to his parish. It is impossible that he lied. There is barely one chance in ten that he was misinformed. So, if the "French lord" concerned convinces me that he desires such "immortality" as the mention of his name would give, then his name shall be mentioned, with perhaps a few more particulars. The probabilities seem to me about ten to one that the story is true. After all, a statement is not necessarily false, because it is known in London.