Part 15

THE TIGER

A tiger to the majority of men is probably the most impressive and suggestive of all animals. Apart from those traits so obvious in his appearance that they affect every one, most beholders have in their minds some material with which imagination works under the quickening influence of his deadly eye. No creature matches him in general powers of destruction; none enacts such tragedies as he, amid scenes so replete with a various interest; none sheds so much human blood.

The hunter’s spirit natural to our remoter ancestors survives in their descendants, and few persons are placed under circumstances favorable for its revival without experiencing something of its force. When tigers are the objects of pursuit, this often becomes a passion.

One can scarcely look upon the poor, dispirited wretch behind the bars of a cage, without freeing it in fancy, and transferring the animal to fitting surroundings,--open spaces in jungle, where tall jowaree grass waves in the evening air, deep nálás clothed with karinda and tamarisk, vast, gloomy forests of sál and teak, magnificent mountain buttresses, upon whose crags stand the ruined fortresses of long-forgotten chiefs. The tiger of the mind, splendid and terrible is there, and we are there to meet him.

“In some parts of India,” remarks Inglis (“Work and Sport on the Nepaul Frontier”), “notably in the Deccan, in certain districts on the Bombay side, and even in the Soonderbunds, near Calcutta, sportsmen and shikáris go after tigers on foot. I must confess that this seems to me a mad thing to do. With every advantage of weapon, with the most daring courage, and the most imperturbable coolness, I think a man no fair match for a tiger in his native jungles.” The list of killed and wounded shows that this opinion is not without foundation; and when we consider what it means to meet such adversaries as these on level ground, and face to face, our judgment of its accuracy cannot be doubtful. Gérard compared a contest on foot with a lion to a duel between adversaries armed with equally efficient weapons, but one naked and the other covered with armor in which there were only one or two spots that were not impenetrable. He intended to illustrate, not the animal’s invulnerability, of course, but the fact that its tenacity of life was such that, unless instantly killed, it would almost certainly kill its opponent. For this reason sportsmen mostly shoot from howdahs, or machans in tree-jungle. In its depths a great forest is nearly lifeless at all times. In India its skirts are commonly fringed with scrub, and there most of the vitality of these regions concentrates itself. The intense heat of noonday at that season when tiger-hunting begins--namely, in April--makes those immense woodlands as silent and lonesome, to all appearance, as if the hand of death had been laid upon them. But when the short twilight of low latitudes deepens into gloom, the air, before vacant, except for the wide sweep of some solitary bird of prey, is filled with the voices of feathered flocks returning to their roosts. Flying foxes cross vistas still open to the view, and great horned owls flit by on muffled wings. Those spectral shapes which haunt such scenes appear amid the solemn gathering of shadows--contrasts in shade indescribably altering objects from what they are, waving boughs and rigid tree trunks that start into strange relief in changing lights, the distorted forms of animals indistinctly seen moving stealthily about. Throughout those provinces where the most famous tiger haunts are found, positions of advantage, each beetling cliff and isolated hill, holds mementos of the past which are now inexpressibly desolate; the former strongholds of Rajpúts that may, like the Baghél clan, have claimed descent from a royal tiger. As we sit aloft watching, a gleam of water, where when gorged the beast will drink, is visible, and towards that also, each with infinite precaution, and guided by senses of whose range and delicacy of perception human beings cannot conceive, the thirsty denizens of this wilderness take their way. When we mark their timid and uncertain steps, and see how often they hesitate and stop and turn aside, the truth that “nature’s peace” is only a form of words expressive of our own misconception and blindness reveals itself most impressively. There is no peace. To hunt and be hunted, to slay and be slain, that is the cycle of all actual life.

Here, while the solemn booming of the great rock monkey sounds like a death knell, those tragedies take place which only a hunter beholds. Every creature has its enemy, and there is one abroad in the gloaming from which all fly. Listen! Above the sambur’s hoarse bark, the bison’s cavernous bellow, and hyæna’s unearthly cry, a deep, flat, hollow voice, thrilling with power, floats through the forest. It is a tiger rounding up deer. If he were in ambush, not the slightest sound would betray his presence. Now his roar, sent from different directions, crowds the game together, and puts it at his mercy.

When and in what way will our tiger come? Some of these beasts never return to a “kill,” they lap the blood, or eat once, and abandon their quarry altogether. Others consume it wholly in one or several meals, and even after putrefaction has set in. This animal for whom we wait may approach boldly while it is yet light, or wait till darkness falls, and appear at any hour of the night. At its coming it might put in practice every precaution that could be made use of in stealing upon living prey, or walk openly towards the carcass with long, swinging, soft but heavy strides.

Incidents of any special kind, however, reveal the tiger’s nature only in part. What sort of a being is this in whole; how much mind does he possess; what are the traits common to his species; and what their individual peculiarities? Do tigers roar like lions and jaguars, and is it probable that their neighborhood would be announced in this manner? Are they in the habit of going about by day; and if not, on what kind of nights is the beast most active and aggressive? How does a tiger take his prey, especially man? How far can one spring; in what way does he kill; what is his mode of devouring creatures? Can tigers climb? How large are they? Will they assail human beings without provocation, or has the aspect of humanity a restraining power over them? May they be met with casually, and at any time? Where are their favorite lairs? Are they brave or cowardly, cunning or stupid, enterprising, adaptive, energetic, or the reverse?

Sanderson declares that the tiger never roars; he grunts according to Major Bevan, and the only approach to roaring Baldwin ever heard, was a hollow, hoarse, moaning cry, made by holding his head close to the ground. Inglis describes the sound as like the fall of earth into some deep cavity, and Colonel Davidson protests that the tiger barks. Pollok, Leveson, Shakespear, and Rice assert that he roars loudly, terribly, magnificently, tremendously; and D’Ewes (“Sporting in Both Hemispheres”) states that in comparison with the roar of a tigress he encountered in the jungle between Ballary and Dharwar, “any similar sound he may have heard, either at the zoölogical gardens or elsewhere, was like a penny trumpet beside an ophicleide.” All these names are those of men who hold the most conspicuous positions among hunters of large game; all had killed many tigers and often heard the animal’s voice.

Much the same contradictory evidence exists with regard to other things. Colonel Pollok assures us that if he trusted to ambushing game to supply himself with food he would starve to death. Captain Rice, a renowned slayer of tigers, lays down the law to this effect, that these brutes never attack except from an ambush.

Without crowding the page with references, suffice it to say that both by day and night, in forests, thickets, and open grass land, tigers have many times been reported by equally reliable witnesses both to stalk their game, and to spring upon it from a place of concealment.

The striped assassin is provided with a jaw and teeth that enable him to crush the large bones of a buffalo. He can strike his claws, as Major Bevan saw him do, through the skull of an ox into its brain, or break a horse’s back with a blow of his forearm. How then does he despatch his victims? Their necks are dislocated, says Colonel Pollok; by biting into them and wrenching round the head with his paws, explains Captain Forsyth. Not at all, protests Baldwin;--dislocation is effected by bending the head backward. In neither way, Dr. Jerdon declares;--the animal’s neck is always broken by a blow. Sir Samuel Baker adds his testimony to the effect that a tiger never strikes, and Sanderson says “the blow with his paw is a fable.” Other authorities maintain that the cervical vertebræ are crushed when the beast, as it always does, bites the back of the neck; and yet others are sure that since he never seizes an animal in this manner, loss of blood is the immediate cause of death, because the great vessels are severed when a tiger, as is his invariable practice, cuts into the throat. Sanderson states that the blood is not sucked, since a tiger could not form the necessary vacuum. In response to this Shakespear and Davidson both saw the blood of animals that had been tied up as lures sucked, and Colonel Campbell, Captain Rice, Major Leveson, and others speak of this act as having come under their personal cognizance.

These animals have been so generally credited with great springing power that the expressions, “tiger’s leap,” and “tiger’s bound,” have passed into the colloquial phrases of more than one language. Nevertheless, when the experiences of eye-witnesses of his performances in this way are referred to, nothing but contradictions are to be met with.

Sanderson (“Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India”) thinks “the tiger’s powers of springing are inconsiderable.” Sir Joseph Fayrer (“The Royal Tiger”) says that “it is doubtful whether a tiger ever bounds when charging,” and Inglis supports him in this particular. Captain Shakespear regarded a machan twelve feet high as perfectly secure, and Captain Baldwin felt that he was safe when fifteen feet above the ground. Moray Brown saw a tiger jump fourteen feet high. J. H. Baldwin (“The Large and Small Game of Bengal”) reports a case in which a tiger leaped the stockade of a cattle-pen “with a large full-grown ox in his mouth,” and Dr. Fayrer gives, in the work referred to, the only authentic story of a tiger’s having taken a man out of a howdah while the elephant was on his feet. Major G. A. R. Dawson describes the accident that occurred to General Morgan from a wounded tigress that sprang across a ravine twenty-five feet wide and struck him down. Captain W. Rice (“Tiger Shooting in India”) measured the leap of a tigress he shot, and found it to be “over seven yards.”

Professor Blyth and Dr. Jerdon concluded from their researches at the Calcutta Museum and elsewhere that tigers could not climb. It was certainly a very singular conclusion to come to on anatomical grounds; but waiving this point, we have the statements of Inglis and Shakespear to the fact that several were shot in trees. It is not worth while to continue these inquiries as to whether it is possible to discover something certain about tigers from books; on all points connected with them we should find the same discordances.

Although Buffon’s extravagances (“Histoire Naturelle”) about this brute’s disposition need not be seriously considered,--such expressions as “sa ferocité n’est comparable à rien” meaning nothing, and no creature, for physiological reasons, being capable of remaining in “a perpetual rage,”--enough is known about the beast to make it doubtful whether it deserves the “whitewashing” that some have given its character. But if it be granted that tigers possess intelligence, that in many places they have become acquainted with the effects of European firearms, and are not at all likely to mistake an Englishman with a rifle for a Hindu carrying a staff, many things which seem inexplicably at variance will become plain. If rage does not overpower their discretion, they run away when the prospect of certain death stares them in the face. What do they do when it does not? that is the question at present, and the answer is that they act like tigers. This most formidable of beasts of prey is not in the least afraid of a man because he is a man; he does not quail at his glance--that enrages him; his voice will not always startle,--it often attracts; nor can the scent of a human being of itself turn him aside--on the contrary, it frequently guides the beast to his prey. So much for the general view; and we may now go into the jungle again and discuss what befalls, in the light of those principles which have been advanced elsewhere. This will be a duróra against the tigers of a district, our hunting-grounds lie in historic spots, and the party is accompanied by elephants, baggage animals, attendants, and all the varied appliances that belong to a raid of this kind conducted upon a large scale.

Close to our camp lie the crumbling cedghas, shrines, tombs, and fortress palaces of a race of princes now extinct, and seated in a kiosk around whose crumbling walls half-effaced Persian and Arabic inscriptions tell of the beauty of some girl whose bright eyes closed ages ago, and whose career of ineffectual passion finds a fit emblem in the pishash, or transient dust column that glides across the plain, let us attempt to forecast the events of to-morrow. More can be foretold than one would suppose. The tiger’s size and age, the configuration of the ground, his previous habits of life, and the places where shade and water are to be found, will certainly affect his movements after he has been roused, and when the shikáris come in we shall know all this. Here is the head huntsman now, who comes back from his scout to make a report to the “Captain of the hunt,” an experienced sportsman always elected on such occasions to take a general direction of affairs, and manœuvre our elephants in the field. Mohammed Kasim Ali is a typical figure and worth looking at; a small withered being with a dingy turban wound around his straggling elf locks; dressed in a ragged shirt of Mhowa green, and lugging a matchlock as long as himself loaded half way up the barrel. He bears the big bison horn of coarse slow-burning native powder, and a small gazelle-horn primer. His person is bedecked with amulets, and his beard, he being an elderly man, is dyed red--if he were young, it would be stained gray. But despite this man’s grotesque appearance, he possesses a profound knowledge of wood-craft, and as a tracker and interpreter of signs, no savage or white prodigy of the wilderness who ever embellished the pages of a certain style of romance can surpass him.

This worthy delivers himself somewhat as follows: “May I be your sacrifice! Whilst searching with eagerness for these sons of the devil, your slave beheld the footprints of a tiger. Alla ke Qoodrut, it is the power of God; then why should your servant defile his mouth with lies? These tracks were made by the great-grandfather of all tigers. The livers of Chinneah and Gogooloo turned to water at the sight, but sustained by my Lord’s condescension I followed them to a nálá, and he was standing by a pool. Karinda and tamarisk bushes grew more thickly than lotus flowers in Paradise, but I saw clearly that the unsainted beast was bigger than a buffalo bull. His teeth were as iron rakes, his eyes glared like bonfires, and the spirits of those whom he had devoured sat upon his head.” This with many aspirations, to the effect that unquenchable fire might consume the souls of the tiger’s entire family.

This rhodomontade--quite in keeping, however, with the individual and his country--means that a large tiger was seen, and will be found for us next day.

The one that Kasim Ali, the eloquent, saw by the pool was making ready for his nightly excursion; for although they are frequently seen abroad by day, these animals are nocturnal in habit. The writer, however, sees no reason for repeating a remark which is often made in this connection, namely, that they are “half-blind” during daylight. There is no rigidity in the iris, nothing to prevent the eye from adjusting itself to different degrees of intensity in that medium by which the retina is stimulated. He sees very well at night, and if sensitive to a strong light, so are many other animals whose vision is also good when it is not dark. It is habitual with tigers to seek shade; and any eyes, except those of some birds, would be dazzled by the intense glare of an Indian sun.

When viewed by the shikáris, he had lately roused from his rest as the day declined, and the faint lowing of distant herds, and far-away voices of Gwallas bringing home their cattle penetrated to his retreat. He stretched his lithe length and magnificent limbs, his fierce eyes dilated, and a strange and terrible change came over the beast. Every attitude and motion betrayed his purpose. But although murder was in his mind, and all that he did revealed that intention, his movements varied, or would do so, with age and experience. If the animal were young, and had been but recently separated from the tigress, that taught him to find prey, showed how to attack it, and encouraged him to kill for the sake of practice, his actions would exhibit all the boldness that comes from entire self-confidence. He then leaves the lair without precaution, and takes his way through the intricacies of the jungle with confidence, not pausing to examine every sign, as his trail shows. If old, however, an unusual sound would stop him, a footprint in the path that was not there when he last passed would turn him aside. This tiger of ours is not aged, but has learned something since he became solitary like all his kind, except in the brief season of pairing. Experience may be thrown away on men, but not upon tigers. This one will never again make mistakes such as those into which overboldness and want of proper attention have already betrayed him. Once, shortly after he began to shift for himself, a buffalo, of whom he thought that it could be killed as easily as a slim long-necked native cow, tossed him. Another time when too hungry to wait for a favorable opportunity, he seized upon a calf prematurely. No sooner did his roar of triumph as he struck it dead echo through the jungle, than a dark crescentic line fringed with clashing horns confronted him. It came on in quick irregular rushes, and no tiger could withstand such an array, so he had to fly. His glossy hide was ripped likewise by a “grim gray tusker,” which the unsophisticated youth designed to despatch without difficulty. Before these instructive incidents occurred something more had been learned also.

One morning the silence was broken by blasts of cholera horns, the beating of tom-toms, and wild cries from a multitude of men--such men, however, as he knew and had frequently observed in the jungle and elsewhere. But there was now a man, mounted on an elephant, the like of which he had never seen, but whose appearance is not forgotten. He had guns far worse than matchlocks, instruments of sudden death that killed his mother. This formidable robber, for all his ferocious temper, great strength, and terrible means of offence, is as cunning as a fox, and wary to a degree that closely simulates cowardice. But one might as well call North American Indians cowards,--which by the way is often done by those whose opinions are unbiassed by any personal acquaintance with them,--because they always fight on the principle of taking the greatest advantage and least risk.

To start a party such as ours takes time, and of the value of time no Hindu has the slightest idea. The mob of beaters are packed off with strenuous injunctions to keep together, but they will not do so. An ineradicable heedlessness besets them, and they are certain to straggle, though the risk that doing so entails is perfectly well understood. The Oriental says, “If it is my fate to perish thus, how can I avoid the decree of heaven? My destiny is fixed; it is in the hands of God, and may the devil take these infidels who talk as if matters could be otherwise than as they are.”

Every crupper, breast-band, girth, and howdah cloth must be looked to by the hunters themselves; mahouts and attendants cannot be trusted to equip their charges, and if things were left to them, an elephant would be disabled every day.

All our proceedings as we draw near to the tiger require to be conducted with reference to the lie of the land. Whether he be beaten for with elephants, or roused by the unearthly clamor of the crowd that has come to drive him, it is probable that his first act will be an attempt to escape. He carries a perfect topographical chart of the neighborhood in his head, and an unguarded avenue of egress means that we shall not carry back his spoils. When he does start, it will not be with the wild, affrighted rush of a bison or sambur stag; his retirement, if he is not actually sighted, is made with the deathly silence of an elephant warned of danger. He makes use of every mode of concealment, creeps from bush to bush, from tree to tree, from rock to rock, crouching where cover grows thin or fails, so that the colors of his coat assimilate with those of the herbage, and he becomes well nigh invisible even in places where it seems utterly impossible for so large an animal to hide himself. In denser jungle the fugitive stops and stands with head erect to listen, or rears up amid long jowaree grass, taking in every sight and sound that indicates the position of his enemies. Thus his advance is made towards the point at which it is intended to break away; and if it be necessary to cross bare spots, he does so, not indeed with a panther’s lightning-like rapidity, but in long, easy bounds that devour the distance.

Under all circumstances, if the ground is sufficiently broken to permit of it, the tiger keeps among ravines, at one time traversing the crest of a ridge, at another stealing along through the underbrush below. Then it is that the pad-elephants and lookouts in trees come into play in order to turn him in the direction where the rifles are stationed; the former by their presence, the latter by softly striking small sticks together.

It is very likely, however, that the surface may not admit of beating with men; then the sportsmen advance in their howdahs, and one may see how a highly-trained shikar tusker can work.

Sir Samuel Baker (“Wild Beasts and Their Ways”) described the qualities of a good hunting animal in action. His party were out near Moorwara. It was in the dry season, and they were keeping on a line parallel with the railroad, and about twenty miles from it. The heat had evaporated tanks, caused upland springs to fail, and dried up pools and watercourses, so that tigers, that cannot endure thirst, were driven from their accustomed retreats into places more accessible. On this occasion the natives were beating towards Baker’s elephant, but the beast, as it sometimes does, broke back upon their line at once.