Part 4

One of them was old Po An, the headman of Eyya village. "Eyya" or "Irra" is the first part of the name of our local Mississippi, the Irrawaddy, and the village is, in fact, at the mouth of the great water-way so called, though it is only one of many water-ways through which the mighty river mingles with the sea. In other words, the village is on the coast, and about the middle of the delta, between Rangoon and Bassein.

In the last week of 1908 Po An and his son, and a friend of his own age (about sixty), left home together to get bamboos. They went in a little boat, landed where they intended, entered the muddy woods and cut what they wanted, and started to carry the bamboos to their boat.

They had heard that there was a man-killing tiger "somewhere thereabouts," but the Burman with a knife in his hand is not easily frightened in the forest. They made the mistake, which is the besetting sin of brave men and used to be called English, of despising the enemy, and did not even keep close together. In returning bamboo-laden, Po An lagged behind "about forty yards," but nobody thought anything of that. His son and companion heard a noise in the jungle too, but did not think of it till a minute or two later, when they ceased to hear the sound of Po An behind, and shouted, "Are you all right?" Receiving no reply they looked round. Not seeing him they laid down their burdens and retraced their steps, but had not far to go. In a glade through which they had come they saw the prostrate figure of Po An and the tiger standing over him.

They were only two men, and one of them was old, and they had no weapons but the big knives they had been using. But instantly they flourished their knives and moved forward, shouting and yelling as if they were the advance guard of an army of men.

The tiger, a big animal in the prime of life, looked up at them in deliberate surprise, and visibly hesitated. Then, as they approached, he moved aside, slowly and reluctantly, into cover, as if to watch what was going to happen and consider what to do.

The two men ran forward, snatched up the corpse and started for the boat, looking round continually, brandishing their knives and shouting, and seeing, or thinking they saw, those great eyes glaring at them through the bushes. They said they even heard the tiger following. Perhaps they did. Time after time they thought it was about to spring upon them, and faced towards the sound, real or imaginary, with knives uplifted and loud shouts of defiance. They reached the boat and got on board, but did not take time to loose the rope. They cut it and pushed off.

Next morning the elder of the two took Major Nethersole and another officer to the place, and there they saw the severed rope and the tracks of the tiger patrolling on the muddy banks. The tides had been such that the tracks must have been made after the men departed, and left no room for doubt that the tiger had come after them to the water's edge, and there lingered long, going up and down as if in a cage, and looking across the waters on which the men had disappeared.

It was several days before the son of Po An and his old friend discovered, as their excitement abated, how badly their nerves had been shaken. Their sleep began to be broken by hideous dreams.

That was more than three months ago. The tiger is dead now (April 1909). His skull and hide can be seen at Pyapon. But still, I believe, though now at greater and greater intervals, sometimes the one and sometimes the other of the two brave men is wakened by the nightmare of those awful eyes, and shrieks and shrieks to his neighbours to come and stay beside him.

VIII

THE INSPECTOR'S ESCAPE

It was about February 1891, and on the left or eastern bank of the Sittang River in Toungoo district, Lower Burma, that an inspector of police was riding northwards along a cart-road, through the woods, as the daylight was quitting the sky, and "suddenly," to use his own words, "I seemed, at one and the same instant, to get a terrific blow in the small of the back, and to feel the pony under me springing upwards, as if it were jumping to the sky." He completed his description by gestures.

A listener suggested, "As if it were suddenly galloping up a wall?"

"Quite so," said he. "The next I felt was that I seemed to fall back upon something soft, and that's all I know. The next I saw was the people bending over me, and I could hear one say to another, 'He's not dead yet,' and others said, 'He's dead,' but none of them touched me, and I tried to speak, but could not. Then after a long time somebody saw I was breathing, and somebody put something under my head, and ... I am not hurt, so far as I am aware," concluded the inspector, "but feel stunned and queer, and horribly helpless."

The villagers said, "We saw the pony come galloping with an empty saddle along the road which goes through the village, and in the middle of the village it stopped short and made a noise. It was quivering. Its hind-quarters were bleeding from great tiger's claw-marks as you see them yet."

The poor beast was still sore from the scratches a month afterwards. Whether it ever recovered I never heard.

With a celerity and courage characteristic of the unspoiled Burman, every man in the village soon had a da (big knife) or home-made spear in his hand, and many had torches or lamps as well. But while they thus prepared for action promptly, it has to be noted that there was a certain hesitation about starting. Some objected. Why? The pony had been recognised as the inspector's. He was rather popular than otherwise, but he was a policeman. No Burman could say with truth that he thought it right to save the life of a policeman. Even the older men, who were addicted to religion, could only say, "He's a man, after all." Equally with the rest they believed that any policeman in the pay of the English is irretrievably doomed to hell, and has deserved to be. But, what made the pious elders on this occasion more readily silent than they might otherwise have been, there were several who delivered themselves of sentiments that might be translated by a verse of an old English ballad:--

"Saddled and bridled And booted rade he; Toom hame (empty home) cam' the saddle, But never cam' he!"

"It's not a man that you're going to save. You're likely to be late for that! It's a corpse you're going to take from a tiger."

This was conclusive. The most scrupulous Burman can risk his life with a clear conscience in fighting a tiger to recover a corpse. So the crowd set out.

Great was their wonder to find the inspector prostrate upon the road, unconscious, but unscratched. When they had heard his story they said to me,--

"The tiger cannot have seen him at all. Lying in wait here, it must have seen only his piebald pony, and, leaping so as to land on its shoulders, it must have knocked its nose severely against the man's back and slipped down. Then he fell upon it, and so perplexed it more than ever, and it would step aside into cover to consider awhile."

Perhaps the shrewdest remark made on the incident was this: "When struck on the back, the man must have let out a howl. That would frighten the tiger!" The inspector did not remember that, but could not be expected to remember it. He would do it without thinking.

It was his own and the general opinion that if help had not come, as it did, the tiger would have come back; and, humanity mastering prejudice, the people said, "We are glad we came."

The fright made him talk of leaving the police and leading a new life. But his salary was good. He was like the rich man in Scripture, who had great possessions. The villagers did not blame him for changing his mind and not resigning. It was as much in earnest as in jest that they said, "He may become religious, when he takes his pension."

About the same time as this wonderful escape, a lonely leper who lived in a hut, like a hermit, on the opposite side of the river, disappeared for ever, and the few bloody rags that were left and the tell-tale footprints showed that the tiger had come upon him, like a thief in the night, and carried him bodily away.

"We are very sorry for the leper," said the villagers to the inspector, when he next rode by, and the fate of the leper was discussed. "We are very sorry for the leper, and for the tiger too. Either your pony or yourself would have been more wholesome eating."

IX

THE SOUND OF HUMANITY

The leopard, if not the boldest of all the feline tribes, is at least the best acquainted with mankind. His partiality for dogs makes him familiar with men's villages. More than any other beast, perhaps, he is prompt to turn at bay when wounded and "charge home." Many a man has lost his life to a wounded leopard. Yet even a leopard is daunted by the sound of humanity.

In 1888 a big one was seen in a large village, not far from Maulmain, one morning. The scattered wooden houses and plentiful shrubs afforded cover. He was merely looking for a dog, and the people said he had repeatedly taken one unnoticed. But this morning a woman saw him and shrieked. The other women shrieked responsive, the children screamed, the dogs barked, and, amid the deafening uproar, the men of the village, and some chance visitors who happened to have guns, concerted measures, partly by dumb show, being scarcely able to make themselves audible to each other.

As soon as the men had obtained silence on one side of the clump of brushwood, wherein Mr Spots was waiting for the clamour to subside, and the men began yelling on the other sides of it, the leopard stepped cautiously into the open on the silent quarter, looking like a detected thief, preparing to run, with his tail between his legs, like a dog that feels he is about to be kicked and deserves it. On seeing an unexpected man in front of him, the leopard shrank aside, apologetically, as if abashed. The man killed it. A sense of what he owed to the other men prevented him allowing it to escape; and so he fired. But it was "against the grain." He felt like slaying a man who had asked for quarter; but, after all, no quarter is ever expected or given on either side in humanity's protracted war with dangerous cats.

In this case the leopard heard no shot until the shot was fired that killed it. It was cowed by the cries. So we need not wonder that the tiger, which is more sylvan in habit and less used to human noises, can be "beaten" out of shelter by the shouting of men and boys. When the tiger breaks out and kills a beater it is not because it has found the heart to face the yelling crowd, but because it is desperate.

We should remember that leopards and tigers love peace as much as do the Quakers. There is no jingo nonsense about them. They never want to fight, and absolutely will not fight unless they have to. Their single aim is to get their dinners, which, as Bismarck reminded a deputation, is the first business of every living being. "Good" or "bad" depends on the way of doing it, he might have added. The war between cats and us is not due to their malignant hostility, but to their physiological necessities. If we were content to let them prey upon us there would be peace. On other terms there can be none. A compromise is impossible. What had to be settled, when the first Hercules took up his club, was whether the world was to be filled by men or cats. It is now some millenniums since the ultimate issue became obvious; but the end is not reached yet.

Of course it is not altogether an aversion to fighting that makes the tiger seek for peace at any price when men surround him. Try for a moment to think in the skin of a tiger. The little jungle dogs are formidable to him, as he is an individualist, and they run in packs. They kill the big deer before his nose, including some he has to leave alone. But what is the union of the dogs compared to the solidarity of men, who "have pity upon one another," as Mahomed noticed? And think again, what a puny thing is a tiger's tooth or claw compared to a big knife!

True it is that when a tiger finds a man unready and alone, he can kill him as easily as a man can kill a chicken. But in the course of ages he has acquired an instinctive horror of men, weak as they are, such as men, in turn, have of snakes. The unknown seems infinite, to tigers as to men. A dog has its teeth, a deer or bull its horns; but when a crowd of men are coming at him with a noise like a cyclone, a tiger cannot tell what to expect. So, even if you were a tiger, with a man's intellect to illumine the aspect of things in general, you would often feel along with it that the better part of valour is discretion.

It is not easy to think in the skin of a tiger. It is easier to realise the effect of the sound of humanity upon a tiger's nerves by watching him and the beaters. The matter is not one upon which there is any difference of opinion possible. This said, nothing perhaps could make the truth so palpable to happy stay-at-homes as a reminiscence I recently heard from a brave European officer who has had experience as a hunter.

For obvious reasons I will omit details that might enable others to identify him against his will. Suffice it to say, the scene was "in darkest Burma," and the time about the end of the nineteenth century.

"You know," said he, "the noise that the tiger makes in going through kaing grass."

But readers in general cannot know that. So it may be explained. In the woods the tiger glides gently, and steps unheard upon dry leaves a man could not touch without a noise. He realises the ideal of good children--to be seen without being heard. It is not that he likes to be seen. He is of a retiring disposition, and prefers to be unnoticed so much so that even if you frequent his haunts you are not likely to see him more than once or twice in a lifetime, though you may comfort yourself--if it is a comfort--by reflecting that he doubtless sees you oftener. He may be a neighbour of yours all his life; as a cub, he may be fed upon your cattle, and, as a grown-up tiger, help himself to the same, without once showing his face or letting you hear his stealthy step. He comes and goes like a thief in the night, and if by rarest chance he walks by day it is on silent pads more noiseless than the best of rubber tyres. But the kaing grass reeds in swampy parts of Burma grow thick and high. They are seldom less than a man's height, and sometimes so high as to overtop a man on horseback, and too thick for a dog to get through. When the tiger is hunting there he has to lie in wait by the sides of the paths. I hesitate to believe what is sometimes said--that he never is noiseless in the kaing--but the evidence is overwhelming that he often goes through it "as loudly as a cart," say some who have heard him, as they waited for him over a kill, or, in one instance, over a calf tied up as a bait.

"The noise is not the _same_ as a cart's, only as loud. It seems to be unmistakable if once you have heard it," said the hunter, whose experience is to be told. "There is a crackling swish--swish, as he crumples up the reeds at every stride. Think of my feelings when I heard it again coming at me as I was walking back to camp along the narrow footpath, with the reeds towering above me, as if shutting out all help, to hide you and drown your voice. Oh, my God!" The man was speaking years afterwards, and shuddered still. "It made me feel queer, I tell you," he went on. "I was paralysed till I remembered what to do. Then didn't I howl, 'Thank God!' and yell! and swear! Somehow you don't recall, at such a time, what you say at church. The tiger might have digested me before I could have repeated a prayer. But every particle of profanity, English, Burmese and Hindustani, that ever was in my head came out then with a howl. I didn't care what it was if it made a noise."

The curious listener, on history intent, tried to refresh his memory by leading questions, but he positively blushed at the recollection, and was as shy as a girl. He proceeded:

"I kept it up, you know--I had to, although I heard the sound draw back a little. It's no joke to have to bluff a tiger in the kaing grass and in the dark, when you cannot see but know he can, and may have his eye upon you. I never stopped the noise. I felt he might spring upon me if it slacked for a second. And when I could not think of any other oath I struck up singing...." And, in short, he emerged from the darkness into the flickering glare of the camp-fire, yelling "Rule, Brittania!" much louder than he ever sang before.

X

THE TIGER AT THE RIFLE-RANGE

About 1891 a tiger began levying taxes on the little town of Shwegyin (Shwayjeen), in Lower Burma, where the Shwegyin river joins the big Sittang. The people were used to leopards, but tigers had ceased from troubling them so long that, as one said, "you might as well try to persuade us that the dead had arisen as that tigers had come back." As there had always been tigers in the adjoining mountains, and the forest spread over the country, and touched the town on every side but where the rivers ran, this prejudice would have been surprising, if it had not been so very human. It is hard to persuade men of what they do not like. The people of Shwegyin were not to be talked out of their comfortable security. No words could persuade them to look out for tiger, but the deeds of the beast itself gradually did.

Though tigers and leopards alike are earnest tariff reformers, their schedules differ in details, and as week succeeded week, and the dogs, so dear to leopards, were steadily neglected, and the invisible enemy, hovering around the herds coming home carelessly, anyhow, in the twilight, took calves and cows and bullocks, as they chanced to stray and offer themselves, in a style no Burman leopard ever tries, its capacity for great destruction was allowed to prove its greatness, and the most prejudiced of the local elders was at last candid enough to say, "I fear I may have to admit it to be a tiger when it is dead and I see it."

At a meeting of the Municipal Committee the president mentioned, adding the losses reported, that the depredations in three months amounted to more than half a year's taxes on the town. Like other oppressors, it destroyed a great deal more than it needed.

The members groaned in chorus, especially those who had cattle. But one who had no such possessions remained cheerful and broke the silence, saying, "It will die some day."

A fellow-member who had had losses glared at the speaker, who was remarkably obese, and said, "If the tiger only knew how much better eating some fat men in our town would make, he might be persuaded to change his diet. I wish he would."

"I never go out at night," said the obese one, hastily, growing grave, whereat the others laughed, and, recovering his composure, he continued: "Tigers come and tigers go, but the taxes go on for ever. When one official goes, another comes." Receiving the expected murmur of applause, he added, "That's what I was going to say."

It should perhaps be remarked that officials in Burma are proverbially classed with thieves and similar afflictions. We must remember that the civilisation of Burma is older than that of England, and should not be angry when the people there smile at those of us who are simple enough to suppose ourselves anything better than an expensive nuisance.

"Of two equal taxes," a Socratic member asked, "which do you feel the more--the first you pay, or the second?"

"The second."

"And the second or the third?"

"The third."

"And the third or a fourth?"

Then all became eloquent simultaneously, lest an addition to the taxes might be in contemplation.

The conclusion was unanimous that the last tax was ever the worst, and the tiger's inflictions the hardest of all to bear. This emboldened a sufferer to propose a levy, and municipal compensation to losers--a proposal which his fellow-members declared to be impracticable. There was no lack of sympathy when details were told. Even the obese member remarked, with unaffected emphasis, "I was very sorry for Mother Silver when she lost a cow." And another fatality was told, and another, and another. If they could have compassed the tiger's death by voting, it would have quickly died.

It did not die. A vote is seldom more than a good resolution. Deeds always need a doer. The most a vote can do is to ensure the worker elbow-room, and in this instance it was superfluous. Nobody wanted to spare the tiger. How to catch it was the problem. Its ravages were imputed to the English government, which had been confiscating arms. So the Deputy Commissioner lent guns and gave out ammunition gratis. But still the tiger flourished.

In vain did men spend nights in trees, "sitting up over a kill," as they expressed it. It never returned to cold meat. Why should it, with plenty of fresh cattle available? In vain did they study the ways it went, and sit in ambush. There was an infinite variety about it. It never repeated a catch in the same place and way. To describe completely all its doings, and the plans that _failed_ to catch it, would fill a book.

At an early period of its history the people began to fetch the cattle home by daylight; but that simple device did not defeat it long. True, it loved the darkness better than the light, and the herds came home undiminished. But the tiger was not to be driven back to a lighter diet so easily. He followed his food. The cattle disappeared in the dark from pens and sheds, and tell-tale marks proclaimed that the thief was the enemy with four big legs and ugly claws.

At times there was an intermission of some weeks, long enough to let everyone grow careless again. But it had only gone to the hills, most probably as people go to Carlsbad, to rest its digestive organs. Then it returned to business with appetite refreshed, a very hungry tiger. People began to speak of it with bated breath and shows of humbleness, as an Englishman talks of a lord or a German of an emperor. That feeling grew to a superstitious dread. This was clearly more than an ordinary tiger.

"Perhaps it is a tigress with a litter of hungry kittens," was a matter-of-fact suggestion, received with a shudder, as if it had been disrespectful, a kind of lese-majesty. Besides, the suggestion was at last seen to be wrong, for once at last, once only, and then only after it had killed its scores, it was seen. A man was riding in the moonlight along the lonely boundary road, and saw it stride across the road, and sit down on the farther side, as if to wait to see him pass. It did not crouch. It sat up squarely, like a cat at home. It raised its head as high as possible, as if to enjoy the coolness of the evening breeze, which was as welcome to the tiger as to any European. On sight of it the rider's Arab mare began to dance, and turned again and again to bolt backwards. This saved Mr Stripes, for the rider, though apparently unarmed, had a pistol in his pocket, and had taken it out and was preparing to empty it as he galloped past. But the mare would not go nearer than 30 yards. The tiger became tired of watching her pirouetting, and stood up as if to depart. The rider fired, and at the sound of the shot, which missed, the tiger slouched swiftly into the woods unharmed, and gave no time for a second shot. When the man arrived at his house, a mile away, he found five other men at his gate, waiting for him, and saying, "Come with us. He" (there was no need to be more explicit) "is slaughtering now on the inner side of this road. We know where he'll cross it, and are going to ambuscade him."

"No use!" was the reply. "I have just seen him pass." They went to see if they had guessed aright. But no! The spot they meant to ambuscade was half a mile from the actual crossing-place.