Part 15

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.

“We were startled,” he continues, “by the tremendous roars of this tiger, continued in quick succession within fifty yards of the position I then occupied. I never heard, either before or since, such a volume of sound proceed from a single animal. There was a horrible significance in the grating and angry voice that betokened extreme fury of attack. Not an instant was lost. The mahout was an excellent man, as cool as a cucumber, and never over-excited. He obeyed the order to advance straight towards the spot where the angry roars still continued without intermission.

“Moolah Box was a thoroughly dependable elephant; but although moving forward with a majestic and determined step, it was in vain that I endeavored to hurry the mahout. Both man and beast appeared to understand their business completely, but according to my ideas the pace was woefully slow if assistance was required in danger.

“The ground was slightly rising, and the jungle thick with saplings about twenty feet in height, and as thick as a man’s leg; these formed an undergrowth among the larger forest trees.

“Moolah Box crashed with his ponderous weight through the resisting mass, bearing down all obstacles before him as he steadily made his way across the intervening growth. The roars had now ceased. There were no leaves on the trees at this advanced season, and one could see the natives among the branches in all directions, as they perched for safety on the limbs to which they had climbed like monkeys at the terrible sounds of danger. ‘Where is the tiger?’ I shouted to the first man we could distinguish in his safe retreat only a few yards distant. ‘Here! here!’ he replied, pointing immediately beneath him. Almost at the same instant, the tiger, which had been lying ready for attack, sprang forward with a loud roar directly for Moolah Box.

“There were so many trees intervening that I could not fire, and the elephant, instead of halting, moved forward, meeting the tiger in his spring. With a swing of his huge head he broke down several tall saplings, that crashed towards the infuriated tiger and checked his onset. Discomfited for a moment, he bounded in retreat, and Moolah Box stood suddenly like a rock, without the slightest movement. This gave me a splendid opportunity, and the .577 bullet rolled him over like a rabbit. Almost at the same instant, having performed a somersault, the tiger disappeared, and fell struggling among the high grass and bushes about fifteen paces distant.

“I now urged Moolah Box carefully forward until I could plainly see the tiger’s shoulders, and then a second shot through the exact centre of the blade-bone terminated its existence.”

In this attack four men were wounded, but it is not often that a tiger charges home upon a line of beaters; generally, only stragglers suffer, although, as has been said, some tigers attack immediately upon being found. Whenever and however the assault is made, it must needs be a terrible one, and to most creatures at once overwhelming. Imagine a beast like this, so active, so powerful, so armed,--five hundred pounds’ weight of incarnated destructive energy launched by such muscles as his against an enemy. “It has been the personification of ferocity and unsparing cruelty,” says Sir Samuel Baker. But it is to the terrible character of its attack, to the fact that this is so frequently fatal, and to the awe-inspiring appearance of the beast as it comes on with dilated form and fire-darting eyes, that much of its reputation for more than ordinary ferocity is due. A tiger is beyond question the most formidable of all predatory creatures when earnest in his aggressive intentions; very frequently, however, he is not so. False charges, made in order to intimidate, are more common than real ones. A tiger will bristle, and snarl, and roar, apparently with a perfect consciousness of the additional impressiveness given to his general appearance in this way. Some are, of course, braver than others; locality and their experience of human power make a wide difference between those whose characters have been formed in separate areas. Still everywhere their temper is short and fierce, and when roused to fury they fight desperately. When we hear of the abject cowardice of these beasts,--how they slink away from before the face of man and cannot endure his look, how they will never assail him if not provoked, and how they die like curs at last,--it is natural, and a mere suggestion of common sense, to think that these are _ex parte_ statements, premature generalizations, sweeping conclusions from special experiences, and misinterpretations of observations that a little diligence and proper intellectual sincerity upon the part of their narrators would have shown to be more than counterbalanced by facts of a different complexion.

No two tigers are identical in anything, and all the elements of uncertainty and dispute which have been specified make their appearance when we come into contact with them. Nobody knows or can know what will happen then. Silently like some grim ghost, the animal may steal within shot, and fall dead at the first fire. Sometimes he bursts from a dense clump of bushes that the hunter’s sight has been unable to penetrate, and if hit, rages round the tree from which the ball came as if mad; or, if his foes be within reach, he kills or is killed. Occasionally when not well watched by lookouts, the first intimation that his domain has been invaded is the signal for a retreat to some secure hiding-place,--the pits and passages of an abandoned mine, or a cave perhaps, in which latter case, if it be attempted to dislodge him by an indraught of smoke from fire kindled at its mouth, it will be seen that a tiger can breathe in an atmosphere such as would seem to be necessarily fatal to any animal. Finally, the brute may break back and attack the beaters, or creep through their line, or charge the elephants, and perish amid the wildest display of fury and desperation. Finally, as it sometimes, though rarely happens, the first stir in the jungle sends him off by an unguarded path across ridges and plains to some distant lair, and the hunt for that day is bootless.

Tiger-shooting is never without danger to the sportsman. Many a man has been clawed out of a tree and killed, or caught before he could get out of reach. Elephants have been pulled down, or the howdah ropes have broken and precipitated its occupants into the tiger’s jaws. Moreover, nine elephants out of ten are not stanch, they become panic-stricken and bolt; in which event the risk of being dashed to death against a tree is greater than that of any other fatal accident that is likely to occur.

Most accounts of tigers are confined to their connection with mankind; but if this be the more important, it certainly is not the more general relationship. Out of the large number born every year (though not in the same season, for these animals pair irregularly) few come in contact with human beings. They prey upon the larger animals of their respective provinces, both wild and domestic, but, of course, chiefly upon the former. In this way they are of positive benefit to the agricultural class. Baldwin, Sanderson, Leveson and others, whose observations made upon the spot, and with the best opportunities for knowing the truth in this matter, are not likely to be incorrect, state that but for the aid rendered by tigers in keeping down the numbers of grain-eating species, the Indian cultivator would find it almost impossible to live. No doubt the same condition of things prevails in other parts of Asia. Cattle-lifters, however, impose a heavy tax on the country, and as these generally grow fat, lazy, and rarely hunt, they are a decided disadvantage to any neighborhood. Furthermore, it is from among this class that most man-eaters come. In districts to which cattle are driven to graze, and then withdrawn when the grass fails, tigers accustomed to haunt the vicinity of herds, and that have remained for the most part guiltless of human blood so long as their supply of beef lasted, are apt to eat the inhabitants when it fails. One of these marauders upon livestock will kill an ox every five days, and smaller domestic animals proportionately often, and it is easy to see that the cost of supporting them must be very considerable.

So much has been said in connection with other beasts of prey upon the subject of those reports in which each group is represented to have an invariable way of capturing and killing game, that it seems unnecessary to enlarge upon this point with reference to tigers. They stalk animals, and spring upon them from an ambush. When a victim has been caught, it is destroyed by a blow with the arm, its neck vertebræ are crushed by a bite, its throat is cut, or head wrenched round. Very probably the tiger does not strike habitually like a lion. He often does so, however, and the fact that one was seen to drive his claws into the brain of an ox has been mentioned. Sir Joseph Fayrer reports the case of a tiger that dashed into a herd, “and in his spring struck down simultaneously a cow with each fore foot.” Major H. A. Leveson (“Hunting Grounds of the Old World”) saw one of his men killed in the Annámullay forest in this manner. “His death,” says Leveson, “must have been instantaneous, as the tigress with the first blow of her paw crushed his skull, and his brains were scattered about.”

“I venture to assert,” says Colonel Gordon Cumming (“Wild Men and Wild Beasts”), “that one of the chief characteristics of the tiger is, that in its wild state, it will only feed on prey of its own killing.” No other name of equal weight has been appended to a statement such as this. On the contrary, nearly all evidence goes to show that tigers are very indiscriminate in their eating, that they feed on almost anything, living or dead, fresh or putrid. Captain Walter Campbell (“The Old Forest Ranger”) mentions the fact of their appropriating game already killed as coming under his personal observation; and Major Leveson (“Sport in Many Lands”) records that he shot two tigers in the Wynaad forest while they were engaged in a desperate fight for the possession of a deer’s carcass. It is notorious that tigers so constantly destroy their cubs that the tigress leaves her mate almost immediately after they are born, and conceals her young. There are several instances in which she herself has been devoured, and there is no doubt of the cannibalism of this beast. J. Moray Brown (“Shikar Sketches”), speaking of the frequency of combats between tigers, says that, “occasionally the victor eats the vanquished.” Colonel Pollok (“Sport in British Burmah”) informs us that “when two tigers contend for the right of slaughtering cattle in any particular locality, one is almost sure to be killed, and, perhaps, eaten by the other. I have known instances of this happening.” General W. C. Andersson shot a tiger in Kandeish, within whose body he found the recently ingested remains of another, whose head and paws were lying close by in the jungle. General Blake also discovered, near Rungiah in Assam, the partially devoured body of a tiger that had been killed by one of its own kind.