Over the length of his career, Jim Corbett killed man-eating tigers and leopards which, among them, accounted for over fifteen hundred human victims. What is rather statistically amazing but true is that he brought to bag both the highest-scoring tiger and the leopard with the largest recorded number of human kills: the Champawat Tigress and the Panar Leopard respectively. Between just these two animals there were 836 dead human beings. Try to guess the odds against both Corbett and the two cats being alive at the same time, let alone in the same country.
It’s interesting that, for all the man-eating going on at the time, Jim Corbett’s first experience of hunting a genuine man-eater was not until 1907, when he was thirty-two years old. Ominously, this particular animal, the Champawat Man-eater, was the first man-eating feline recorded in Kumaon, the tigress that to this day has never been surpassed in numbers of human victims. It had come from Nepal, driven out of that country by an army of Nepalese sent against it, and chased over into India in 1903 (thanks a lot, chaps, but we already have plenty). To its score of 200 people killed in Nepal, it added another 236 during the four years it lived in the Kumaon area of Corbett’s homeland. Despite large rewards and heavy hunting pressure, nobody could stem the growing terror of the Champawat Man-eater’s depredation, and hundreds of square miles were in a complete funk. After the man considered the best shikari in India had failed utterly to connect, Corbett, by virtue of his reputation as a sportsman, was asked to try his hand at killing her. He started his hunt at the village of Pali some fifteen miles from Champawat, the namesake of the man-eater.
Five days before his arrival, a woman gathering leaves from an oak tree had been pulled out of it by the tigress, who grabbed her by the ankles and jerked so hard that the skin of her palms was still hanging shredded from the branch she had grasped. That night and the next two, the tigress had stayed near the village, roaring throughout the darkness, completely paralyzing the people with terror. On Corbett’s arrival, it was all he could do to get them to open up for him, and the amount of human nightsoil around the doors showed that nobody had budged since the attack. Gaining the villagers’ confidence with some fancy shooting of three mountain goats, Corbett talked a few of the braver men into showing him the scene of the kill, where some bone splinters—all that was left of the woman—were gathered to be cremated.
While at Pali, Corbett heard the tragic story of an incident that had taken place nearby about a year past. Two sisters were out cutting grass when the Champawat tigress, who had been stalking them, sprang and killed the elder of the women. Gripping her body in her jaws, the tigress ran off with the dead woman, the younger sister chasing after the man-eater with a sickle to try and save the older. Before witnesses, she ran screaming behind the tigress for more than one hundred yards before the man-eater, who was becoming distraught at such unlikely behavior, dropped the body and charged her pursuer. The younger sister sheered off and the tigress let her go, but when she recovered from her run back in the village, it was discovered that she had lost her power of speech. When Corbett met her, he was told she had not uttered a sound in a year—obviously, a classic case of hysterical shock.
Corbett’s first night of what were to be thirty-two years of man-eater hunting was spent with his back to a tree on the road that ran past the village, which makes one wonder whether or not Mrs. Corbett raised any idiots. Apparently not, because as soon as it was dark, Jim realized just what a handy main course he offered, and, although he was too terrified to try to walk back to the village, he kept awake through the night listening to his own chattering teeth. To everybody’s amazement, he was still alive at dawn. The next three days he spent chance hunting in the vicinity until it was clear that the tigress had moved off.
Walking to Champawat, the protection of his rifle drew a good crowd of Indian travelers, so that by the time Champawat was reached, Corbett’s party had grown from eight to thirty men. Several of these hill men had been in another group of twenty men, walking together for mutual protection some two months before on this same road. As they told the sahib, the terrible sounds of a woman screaming had been heard from the valley below, moving toward them as they huddled on the dirt track. Closer and closer had come the agonized shrieks, until they gasped to see a tigress come into sight, carrying a naked woman by the small of her back, her hair trailing on the ground on one side of the cat and her feet in the dust on the other. In desperation, she had beaten her chest with her fists, wailing hopelessly for help from God or man. Ignoring the group of men, the tigress had calmly walked past, fifty yards away, the shocked people frozen as the poor woman’s cries had slowly faded in the distance.
Since none of the men had been armed, none of them had shown any particular enthusiasm for taking the woman away from the man-eating tigress. Shortly thereafter, however, a rescue party with some guns had come along, and the forces joined. Their large numbers must have been enough to frighten the tigress, for, after a mile of noisy following, the woman had been found, uneaten, lying on a flat rock. She had been licked clean by the killer, yet was untouched but for the fang holes in her back. It was a piteous scene:
Beyond licking off all the blood and making her body clean, the tiger had not touched her, and, there being no woman in our party, we men averted our faces as we wrapped her body in the loincloths which one and another gave, for she looked as she lay on her back as one who sleeps, and would awaken in shame when touched.
At Champawat, Corbett presented letters of introduction to the tahsildar (tax collector), who was more or less the highest authority of the village and environs. The next day, on the tahsildar’s advice, Corbett moved to a dak bungalow (a rest house for people traveling on official business) a few miles away, in an area where the man-eater had been most active. Bingo! As he stood talking to the tax collector on a hill, a man came running up from the village with news that a girl had just been taken by the tigress. Grabbing his rifle, Corbett ran down the slope and was shown the patch of fresh blood and broken beads where the teenager had been killed. He was amazed that she had been taken so silently, on open ground, from among a dozen people gathering kindling. The only hint that survivors had had of trouble was a small choking sound made by the girl in the tiger’s jaws.
At once picking up the pug marks and blood spoor, Corbett tracked for half a mile, finding the young woman’s clothes. As he observed, “Once again the tigress was carrying a naked woman, but mercifully on this occasion her burden was dead.” The spoor ran over a hill and through a thicket, the thorns of which had snagged several long strands of the dead girl’s blue-black hair. Beyond this was a nasty bed of nettles, and, as Corbett was trying to see if he could avoid them, he heard someone approaching from behind. It was a frightened old man with a gun, sent by the tahsildar, of whom he was even more afraid than the tigress. Not wanting to waste time arguing, Corbett had him take off his heavy, noisy boots, and they proceeded painfully through the stinging patch of nettles. As the trail took a hard left turn and the cover grew thicker, the Indian’s fear began to interfere with Corbett’s concentration. Every few feet the man would grab the sahib’s arm, swearing that he could hear the tigress but a few feet away. When the pair came to a stand of rocks thirty feet high, Corbett told the old man to climb it and wait while he went on alone.
Some distance ahead, he found the leg by the pool of water, detected the man-eater’s presence through a sixth-sense warning and finally had to give up the chase through impending darkness.
Corbett thought it could work. As he sat smoking, he examined the land below, carefully noting each feature, planning the feasibility of a beat. Below him lay a natural amphitheater between the hills, cut by a valley worn by a small stream over eons of patient time. On the far side of the depression, the stream had hit rock and turned from east to north, flowing out of the amphitheater through a narrow gorge. There were also two hills, one so steep it was unlikely to be climbed by anything less than a bird, the other some two thousand feet of slope with little cover. S
lowly, the idea took shape. If he could form the line of beaters across the ridge that ran between the stream and the very steep slope, the tigress should be forced from what he guessed to be her present position, in a thick wood slightly more than a half-mile per side, to seek the most likely line of escape. This would, logically, be through the gorge. But how to get the terrified men to leave the safety of their homes to beat drums and throw rocks to drive a tiger? It would take a big party to beat the hillside effectively. But then, perhaps the tahsildar had powers of persuasion … .
The next morning at ten o’clock, the tahsildar and one other man showed up at Corbett’s bungalow. The hunter’s heart sank. Then, as he watched with growing admiration for the tax collector’s “persuasion,” a small army of men, armed with an astounding collection of derelict firearms, drums, horns and gongs, began to stream up the hill. By noon, they were only two short of three hundred beaters. Considering their abject fear of the tiger, it was a brave showing, indeed.
The tahsildar had declared a full amnesty on the highly illegal guns which had been dug up from hut floors and collected from hollow trees; he had gone even further by agreeing to supply ammunition for those who had none. Of course, the value of the guns was in their noise effect, and there was little doubt that they would finish the day doing far more harm to their owners and other beaters than they ever would to the tigress. For this reason, the tahsildar decided to go with Corbett, rather than risk picking a chunk of burst gunbarrel out of his skull from one of the old pieces. When at last the whole crew was assembled, Corbett addressed them, giving his instructions after walking them to the ridge where the dead girl’s skirt was still fluttering with lonely pathos in the mountain breeze. The beaters should form a line across the top of the hill, giving Corbett and the tahsildar time to get across into position on the opposite hill. When Corbett waved his handkerchief from the slope well below a lightning-struck pine, they should start the beat with a burst of gunfire and all the noise they could manage. It was by no means a classic tiger beat, as the men were not to move down the valley but rely on their stationary racket at the head to move the man-eater. It would have to be enough; to enter the jungle valley would be suicide.
Corbett and the tahsildar started off, assured that everybody understood his instructions, skirting wide around the valley and descending to the pine tree. At this point, the Indian, who was getting blisters from his patent leather shoes, begged a halt to take them off. As he sat down to do so, the beaters took it for the signal, and the amphitheater rocked with gunfire, horn blasts, shouts and rolling, bouncing rocks crashing down the slopes into the jungle below.
Too much, too early.
Corbett was fully 150 yards from the place where he intended to ambush the tigress, a lunar landscape nightmare of steep broken rock and scree. Nonetheless, he took the run at full speed, desperate he would miss the chance. Only his hill breeding let him reach a patch of two-foot-high grass near the gorge, heaving for breath, his neck yet unbroken. The grass would have to do, he quickly concluded, sitting down and keeping absolutely still, with half his body hidden. As any experienced sportsman knows, it is motion that betrays, not color. He took a deep, steadying breath. If she was coming, it would be soon … .
At the head of the valley, the beaters were going absolutely mad, a good sign they had caught sight of the man-eater. Suddenly Corbett saw a flicker of tawny, striped motion as the Champawat tigress came into view, bounding down the slope to the hunter’s right front, some 300 yards away. Corbett snicked the safety off his express rifle. It was going to work. She was headed for the gorge!
Two distinct shots boomed and echoed up the hillside. God! No! The damn fool tahsildar had emptied both barrels of his decrepit shotgun at the man-eater as she passed, far out of range. Instantly, the tiger swapped ends, racing back up the hill, straight for the unsuspecting line of beaters, a worthless long-range bullet of Corbett’s whapping with sterile force into the rocks at the edge of the jungle. Jim Corbett felt sick to his stomach. It wasn’t just a failure, it was a disaster. Any second he would hear the shrieks of agony and terror as the big tigress burst from cover and tore, mauling and biting, through the line of beaters. How many widows would there be tonight because of his bright ideas?
As he held his breath helplessly, he was stunned to hear a roar of guns and voices exploding in joy from the ridge, so loud they made the first seem like whispers. Having heard the two shotgun blasts shortly followed by one shot from the sahib’s big double gun, they were certain that the tiger had been killed. Startled by the terrific outburst of sound, the tigress again ran down the valley, breaking into the open to Corbett’s left, heading straight for the mouth of the gorge. As she hurdled the stream in a single, fluid bound, the .500 modified cordite rifle came up, the front bead nestling coolly in the wide vee of the rear sights, Corbett holding low on her shoulder, as the rifle had been sighted in at sea level and would shoot high in this thin air. As he felt the sear slip and the crunch of recoil from the first barrel, the tigress stopped completely, apparently unhurt. Turning toward the patch of grass, she presented a perfect angle on a left shoulder at about thirty yards, staring straight at Corbett. As the big bullet smashed home, she flinched but did not go down. Her eyes blazing, ears laid back, the low moan of a snarl built in her throat, as Corbett watched her over the sights, trying to decide how he would handle the charge.
It was quite an interesting problem, because Corbett was completely out of ammunition. Never having thought he would have a chance of more than two shots, he had brought only three, including one extra for “an emergency.” The first had been wasted on the long shot up the valley, and the last two spent at thirty yards. Now it looked as if he would have to pay the price of his indiscretion. For what must have seemed several weeks to Corbett, the most dangerous man-eating cat in the world and the unarmed man looked into each other’s eyes across ninety feet of Indian hillside.
I know you’re asking the same, rather obvious question that ran through my mind: Was this guy Corbett nuts? Was he a couple of bubbles off plumb? Who goes man-eating tiger hunting with only three cartridges? Not me, forever-loving, bloody damn sure! I wouldn’t go to Sunday school without at least twenty rounds, two large knives, one handgun and a pocketful of grenades, if they’d let me. It’s easy enough to get yourself a one-way ticket West with any cat, man-eater or not; but to get nailed because you brought only three cartridges would be just too much!
Despite the variety of opinions on the subject, there apparently is a God. Or, by a function either of the deity or a good London gunmaker, the Champawat Man-eater was harder hit than Corbett had expected. She did not charge the man. Instead, she slowly turned, waded the stream and, crossing a tangle of broken rocks, forced herself up a slanting narrow ledge that ran across the front of the very steep hill. Reaching a projecting flat slab, she pulled herself onto its surface and began clawing and biting at a small bush whose windblown seed had taken root in a crack of the slab.
His heart having restarted, Corbett shouted for the tahsildar under the big pine tree up the slope to bring his gun. Getting a rather involved answer out of which Corbett could only discern the word “feet,” he figured the hell with it and ran up the hill, grabbing the slug-loaded shotgun away from the tax collector. As he tore back down the slope and across the stream, toward the tigress on the rock slab, the man-eater stopped ripping up the bush and came toward Corbett. Hardly having glanced at the gun, he went to within twenty feet of the growling tigress, who was making it pretty clear she did not like him. Lifting the old gun to his shoulder, Corbett was bound to have gotten some idea that it just wasn’t his day. As he looked at the breech to be sure it was closed, he noticed a gapping crack some three-eighths of an inch between the barrels and the breech block. There was no easy way to know—other than firing it—if the gun would blow up in his face. If the separation had been caused by the two shots the tahsildar had pegged at the tigress a few minutes ago, it could well take off Corbet
t’s head as he pulled the trigger. At the very least, he ran a grave risk of being permanently blinded by the blow-back of burning gases erupting through the gap. Nonetheless, he lined up the baked potato of a foresight on the center of the tigress’s open mouth and squeezed the trigger.
With a great burp of black powder smoke, the old gun fired. Twenty feet away, the tigress swayed and jerked forward, falling in a heap with her head overhanging the edge of the rock. She had probably been dead before the shotgun slug ever hit her. The slug, which barely broke the skin of the right forepaw, had been so ineffective that Corbett later pulled it out with nothing more than his fingernails!
The men now came down from the ridge with swords, axes, spears and every other form of weapon, hot on the idea of whipping up a bunch of tigerburger. As there were many among the men who had lost wives and children to this same tigress, their enthusiasm could be understood, but Corbett got them calmed down before they could chop the cat into chunks. It would be important, Corbett knew, to show her body to as many of the hill people as possible, so that they would know it was the same tiger and that she, unlike the spirit she was supposed to be, was well and truly dead.
Examining the body, Corbett noticed that both canine teeth on the right side of the mouth had been broken off long ago, one all the way down to the socket. Unable to kill her natural prey, she had been forced to take up man-eating. Corbett says that the injury was the result of a bullet wound, but whether there was clear evidence of this or it was mere reasonable surmise is not recorded.
Death in the Silent Places Page 22