Part 17

“All the old cows and calves were in rear of the herd, and it was not a little comical to witness their awkward attitudes. They would stretch their ungainly necks, and shake their heads as if they did not rightly understand what was going on. Finding that if they stopped too long to indulge their curiosity, there was danger of getting separated from the fighting members of the herd, they would make a stupid, lumbering, headlong rush forward, and jostle each other in their blundering panic.

“It was a grand sight. The tigress was the embodiment of lithe savage beauty, but her features expressed the wildest baffled rage. I could have shot the striped vixen over and over again, but I wished to keep her for my friends; and I was thrilled by the excitement of such a novel scene.

“Suddenly our elephant trumpeted, and shied quickly on one side from something lying on the ground. Curling up its trunk it began backing and piping at a prodigious rate.

“‘Hallo! what’s the matter now?’ said I to Debnarain.

“‘God only knows,’ said he.

“‘A young tiger! Bagh ta butcha,’ screamed our mahout, and regardless of the elephant or our cries, he scuttled down the pad rope like a monkey down a backstay, and clutching a young dead tiger cub, threw it up to Debnarain. It was about the size of a small poodle, and had evidently been trampled by the pursuing herd of buffaloes.

“‘There may be others,’ said the gomasta, and peering into every bush, we went slowly on. My elephant then showed decided symptoms of dislike and reluctance to approach a particular dense clump of grass.

“A sounding whack on the head, however, made her quicken her steps, and thrusting the long stalks aside, she discovered for us three blinking little cubs, brothers of the defunct, and doubtless part of the same litter. Their eyes were scarcely open, and they lay huddled together like three enormous striped kittens, and spat at us, and bristled their little mustaches much as an angry cat would do. All four were males.

“It was not long before I had them wrapped up carefully in the mahout’s blanket. Overjoyed at our good fortune, we left the excited herd still executing their singular war-dance, and the enraged tigress, robbed of her whelps, consuming her soul in baffled fury.

“We heard her roaring through the night close to camp, and on my friends’ arrival, we beat her up next morning, and she fell, pierced by three balls, in a fierce and determined charge. We came upon her across the nullah, and her mind was evidently made up to fight.”

A tiger may fail in front of a herd, but with stragglers, and there are always such, the case is not the same. He can kill individual buffaloes, or he would not be there, and this is done so quietly and expeditiously that very often the act remains for a time undiscovered. His “fore-paw,” observes Inglis, “is a most formidable weapon of attack.... One blow is generally sufficient to slay the largest bullock or buffalo.” Then he reports how a tiger, charging through the skirts of a herd, “broke the backs of two of these animals, ... giving each a stroke, right and left, as he passed along.” Now it is certain that an Asiatic buffalo is quite as large and formidable an animal as the bison; and it may naturally be inferred from this, that most of these latter fare differently from the one Leveson and Burton saw fighting at the Nedeniallah Hills.

Having thus secured a supply of beef, the tiger usually withdraws and waits for night to make his meal. But if he were alone with his victim, if there were no danger of being winded and attacked by its companions, he would act differently, and might eat at once. Inglis does not tell how he became acquainted with the following details, but he states that as soon as his prey is struck down, the tiger “fastens on the throat of the animal he has felled, and invariably tries to tear open the jugular vein.” This he does instinctively, because he knows intuitively that “this is the most deadly spot in the whole body.” But the tiger’s intuitions and Inglis’s knowledge are both at fault in this particular. “When he has got hold of his victim by the throat, he lies down, holding on to the bleeding carcass, snarling and growling, and fastening and unfastening his talons.” In some instances, continues this writer, he may drink the blood, “but in many cases I know from my own observation that the blood is not drunk.” After life is extinct, these brutes “walk round the prostrate carcasses of their victims, growling and spitting like tabby cats.” If they wish to eat then, the body is neatly disembowelled, and the meal begins on the haunch. A panther or leopard would commonly commence with the inner part of the thighs, “a wolf tears open the belly and eats the intestines first,” and a hawk, and other birds of prey, pick out the eyes; but a tiger follows the course described, as a rule, and after having bolted--for he never chews his food--as much as he can hold, the remainder is dragged off and concealed, or at least this is the intention, though his design is always very imperfectly executed.

Colonel Barras, while waiting for a tiger driven by beaters, saw the beast break back upon their line, as these animals are apt to do, and with evil consequences, seeing that no power can keep Hindus together.

“I saw him rise up on his hind legs and take the head of one of them in his mouth. In an instant he dropped his victim, and made short pounces at the others, who (as may be supposed) were flying wildly in all directions. Numbers of them left the long cloths they wear round their heads sticking to the thorny bushes. These, it seemed to me, the tiger mistook for some snare, as he suddenly turned and bounded away at tremendous speed under the very tree I was in. Owing to the great pace he was going I missed him. I have since seen others miss under the same circumstances, but at the time I felt my position keenly, being under the impression that other persons invariably dropped their tigers whenever and wherever they might get a glimpse of them.

“It only remained now to follow up the brute with elephants. Owing to the fierceness of the sun, he would not be likely to travel far, or make many moves. After tracking for about an hour, he did turn out in front of one of the elephants, and was fired at by the people in the howdah, with what success I do not remember. For a moment he pulled himself up, and seemed about to charge, but thought better of it, and was soon out of sight again. We followed him for some hours along the rocky banks of the river, visiting all the most likely nooks and corners, in hopes that he might find it impossible to travel any further over the burning rocks. Towards evening he was descried at the distance of a quarter of a mile, swimming across a deep pool that led into an extensive piece of forest. Here we deemed it advisable to leave him for the night, and organize a fresh plan for the morrow. Accordingly the next morning a beat was commenced from the opposite side of the wood, which proved successful. The tiger broke readily and was shot by one of the party. It was a very fine male, in the prime of life. At first I wondered why it was so certainly admitted to be the tiger of the day before. On asking the question, his feet were pointed out to me. They were completely raw with his long ramble over the burning rocks. It is not improbable that had he been only slightly driven, he would have travelled miles away during the night, and we might have lost him.”

As for the wounded man, whose skull, strange to say, had not been crushed, he was carefully attended to and well rewarded for his sufferings.

“An occasional accident of this sort should not be looked upon as a proof of the brutal indifference of the English in India to the lives of the suffering natives--quite the contrary. The natives, except under European leadership, will not go out against dangerous animals. Bapoo says, ‘My cow is not killed, and besides I have obtained a charm from a holy man, by which she is made safe against tigers. Why should I go out?’ On the other hand, Luximon says, ‘My cow is killed; I shall certainly not go.’” In consequence of these reasonings, they and their cattle continue to be eaten. As Barras says, “The result is that the tigers get the better of the natives, and kill so many of them and their cattle, that I have seen many ruined villages, which have been abandoned owing to the neighborhood of these animals. It is, therefore, a very good thing for the inhabitants when a well-appointed shooting party arrives.

“One of the most curious features of tiger-shooting is the extraordinary tenacity with which both the Europeans and natives engaged in the sport adhere to certain traditions. In vain does a tiger break through all established rules before the very eyes of those engaged; the shikáris, both white and black, continue as firm as ever in their articles of faith, and, by their blind belief in the same, often lose a tiger. I propose, therefore, to mention a few of the most cherished laws, and to show in the following pages that they are in every instance fallacies.

“(1) A tiger never charges unless wounded, or in defence of its young cubs.

“(2) It never lies up for the day in hot weather in a jungle where there is no water.

“(3) It never looks upward so as to see any one in a tree.

“I have already given one instance of an unwounded tiger charging and nearly killing a beater, and I now propose to show how another was unprincipled enough to break two of the three rules at the same time.

“A few days after the events narrated in the preceding chapter, I and the four others comprising our party were duly posted across a wide nullah (dry watercourse). Gibbon was told off for a tree growing on the top of the bank. The fork into which he climbed must have been quite twelve feet from the ground, so that as I sat in my bush in the bed of the nullah he appeared almost in another world. As soon as we were all settled the beat began. Our band on this occasion was unusually good. It produced a loud and piercing discord.

“Almost immediately was heard the sound as of a horse galloping down the stony bed of the nullah. It was a tigress charging at full speed. Like a flash of lightning she had cleared all obstacles, and was in the first fork of Gibbon’s tree eight feet from the ground, and perpendicular to it. Gibbon fired down upon her, and she fell to the earth with her jaw broken, but instantly charged again to the same spot, when another sportsman hit her with an Express bullet in the back, making a fearful wound.

“The pursuit on elephants now commenced. There were three of them, and each had a line of his own to investigate. One called Bahadur Gūj was much the stanchest, and knew what it was to be clawed.

“Just as this elephant was passing a thick spot, the wounded tigress sprang on his head. There was a brief but exciting struggle. Bahadur Gūj got his enemy down, trampled it to death, and then flung its body up on to the bank of the nullah.... Fortunately for the elephant, the tiger’s jaw was broken, so that he received no injuries worth mentioning.

“The following incidents will show, I think, what a mistake it is to suppose that tigers are never found except in the near neighborhood of water during the hot months of the year. Whilst out with a party of four, in the middle of May, we beat unsuccessfully for a fine tigress that had killed a cow during the previous night. The beat was properly conducted, but no beast of prey appeared. A mile or two distant there was a very fine jungle, but it was decided that as there was no water, there could be no tiger in it. We therefore thought it a good opportunity to organize a beat on behalf of our native shikáris, in order that they might slay for themselves deer, pig, and such like animals for their own eating.

“Accordingly, we repaired to the desired locality, and scattered ourselves about without taking any of the usual precautions. Some of us helped in the beat, and some of the beaters converted themselves into shooters, and took up such positions as seemed good to them. Things were proceeding very pleasantly, when suddenly a shot was fired by one of the natives, and word was rapidly passed that he had aimed at a tiger, which had not fallen, but gone on up a ravine towards the head of the jungle. No blood marks were found, and the bullet was held to have missed. This was ultimately found to be true. But at the moment I doubted it, for the man was an excellent shot, and the tiger had come out slowly just in front of him.... At all events, the tiger was gone, and I and my friend had to do our best to find him. The elephant Bahadur Gūj was called up, and I and my companion stood up in front of the howdah, while the native who had first fired at the animal occupied a back seat with his little son.