The final disappointment came soon after the arrival of the Tahsildar, just as the night was beginning to fall. He listened with rapt attention to the stories of the day, only to inform Corbett that he could not stay at the bungalow with him as he had said he would. Perhaps the Tahsildar actually did have urgent business to attend to back in Champawat, or possibly he was concerned about appearing too friendly with the British—after all, finding the tiger depended on the cooperation of the local townspeople and villagers, and managing his relationship with the colonial government was a delicate affair. Regardless, after chatting affably for a few minutes in the gathering dusk, he apologized and said that he had no choice but to return to town—a change of plans that dismayed Corbett, as he was beginning to realize just how instrumental the Tahsildar might actually be. Corbett’s growing admiration for the man is captured in his hunting memoir, Man-Eaters of Kumaon:
On returning to the bungalow I found the Tahsildar was back, and as we sat on the verandah I told him of my day’s experience. Expressing regret at my having had to go so far on a wild-goose chase, he rose, saying that as he had a long way to go he must start at once. This announcement caused me no little surprise, for twice that day he had said he would stay the night with me. It was not the question of his staying the night that concerned me, but the risk he was taking; however, he was deaf to all my arguments and, as he stepped off the verandah into the dark night, with only one man following him carrying a smoky lantern which gave a mere glimmer of light, to do a walk of four miles in a locality in which men only moved in large parties in daylight, I took off my hat to a very brave man.
It appears to have affected Corbett greatly, that image: the Tahsildar, path lit only faintly by a single swinging lantern, gathering his robes and walking into the Kumaoni night, his pale form entering the darkness unarmed and unafraid. It was the sort of courage Corbett himself no doubt wished he could summon. He knew he was going to need it soon.
With the Tahsildar gone and his men already turned in, Corbett likely spent the evening on his own, eating a simple meal prepared by the chowkidar, smoking a procession of nervous cigarettes, listening in the dark to the collected whispers of the forest. Wondering where the tiger was at that moment. He understood the stakes. And if he succeeded in his mission, he knew what such a victory would entail. There would of course be the ancillary benefits: the plaudits from Charles Henry Berthoud back in Nainital, perhaps even recognition from the lieutenant governor himself—all of which could help pull a domiciled Irish lad out of a dead-end railway job at a backwater on the Ganges. But more important—much more, knowing where Corbett’s allegiances lay—he would be saving scores of Kumaoni lives down the line. Corbett had learned from its tracks that the Champawat was an older tiger, though still in decent form—a fact that the Indian journal The Pioneer would confirm in an article published on June 7, 1907, stating that the cat “was not young . . . [but] in good condition.” Which meant that even though the Champawat was past its prime, it still had years of killing before it. More gore-spattered topis, more claw-shredded saris, punctuating blood trails across stony, cold ravines. Corbett had seen it with his own eyes; he had wrapped the bone shards in funerary cotton with his own trembling hands. And he knew that although the final hunt would no doubt require assistance, he alone was in a position to stop the tiger.
If he failed, however—if the tiger came at him and his bullet did not hit its mark—there would also be consequences far more immediate, far more personal, as well. First, there would be the sheer force of the impact: a collision unimaginable, one that de-socketed his spine and split open his ribs. Then, the claws—ten of them, long as butcher blades, that stripped the flesh from his back and punctured his lungs. Followed at last by the teeth, a crushing quartet in the nape of his neck. And if his consciousness persisted beyond that, nothing remained but to be carried in the tiger’s jaws as limp and helpless as a child, the sounds of civilization fading just as the wild chorus of the forest began, the hot rankness of its breath just a hint of the true horror to come . . .
It would have been enough to give anyone nightmares, and it seems even Jim Corbett was not immune to bad dreams. In his account of the ordeal, he writes only of what transpired that night in the bungalow as something best left unwritten, a tale “beyond the laws of nature.” And while the meaning of that phrase is not immediately clear, it seems reasonable to presume that he suffered some sort of panic attack or night terror, alone in the darkness, that left him sleepless and profoundly shaken. And who can blame him? In the inscrutable night, deep in hostile country, with a creature on its way that was believed to have killed nearly half a thousand people, terror was a sane reaction. With the bands of shadow turning to stripes in the cold glare of moonlight, and with dark shapes shuffling through the dust of the courtyard, it must have been difficult not to imagine, while gasping for breath and unable to move, that the Champawat was just outside, golden eyes watching, a Grendel come to collect its due. Years later, Corbett described such visions:
Few of us, I imagine, have escaped that worst of all nightmares in which, while our limbs and vocal cords are paralysed with fear, some terrible beast in a monstrous form approaches to destroy us; the nightmare from which, sweating fear in every pore, we waken with a cry of thankfulness to Heaven that it was only a dream.
Only, for the people of Champawat, among whom Corbett now found himself, the monster that stalked them was no dream. Affirmation of that fact came the next morning after the arrival of the Tahsildar, who had kept his promise and returned to the bungalow as soon as he was able. Corbett, no doubt groggy after his harrowing night, was much relieved to see his friend arrive safely. The two men were talking, discussing the tiger’s habits and attempting to presage its next move, when a runner from a nearby village suddenly appeared. The messenger came screaming up the side of the mountain, and in doing so, rendered their divinations all at once superfluous.
Come quickly, sahib, the man begged of Corbett, using the deferential form of address generally reserved for the British, the man-eater has just killed a girl! *
It was a bittersweet reckoning. Another life had been stolen by the tiger’s claws; but it meant there was a chance, if they were quick enough, of stopping the cat. The advice of the Pali villagers and the instincts of the hunter had both proven correct—the tiger had indeed returned to Champawat. It had killed again.
Corbett didn’t waste a minute. He was already dressed in short pants and rubber-soled shoes—his outfit of choice when it came to pursuing large game. All that remained was a rifle. Informing the Tahsildar of his intentions as he raced past him, he ducked back into the bungalow to fetch a gun. Rather than selecting his old friend the .450 black-powder Martini-Henry rifle, or a lighter, more manageable .275, which he would come to rely on later in his life, Corbett chose from his private arsenal a double-barrel .500 modified cordite rifle, swapping out conventional black-powder cartridges for their more powerful nitro counterparts. Effectively, this hybrid weapon was a converted elephant gun, a new firearm-and-ammo combo capable of taking down everything from rhinoceros to Cape buffalo to the biggest of tuskers. High-powered double-barrel rifles of this kind had been first developed for hunting in Africa and Asia in the mid-nineteenth century, when it became clear that neither muzzle-loaders nor single-barrel rifles were up to the challenge of stopping charging large game in its tracks. With the arrival of cordite propellant in the late nineteenth century, however, bullet velocities became attainable that had never been possible with the older, black-powder cartridges. In 1907, Corbett was straddling two eras—that of black powder and that of cordite—and by deciding to use the upgraded cordite cartridges in an oversized black-powder weapon to take on the Champawat, he made a strategic choice. As to why, exactly, he would choose this unwieldly twin-barrel shoulder cannon over something less awkward, the answer is simple: just like elephant and rhinoceros hunters in Africa, he had to stop the Champawat from charging. A smaller-caliber or lower-vel
ocity weapon might have been easier to move through the jungle with, but it would have been far more likely to leave a wounded, enraged animal. In the case of a normal tiger, hunted from atop an elephant or raised machan, this would not have been so problematic—upon fleeing, a wounded tiger could be easily tracked and finished off later. But with a creature that had already attacked and devoured close to five hundred people, there was no guarantee that a hunter on foot would cause it to flee. An aggressive attack in defense of its kill seemed more likely, in which case blowing a pair of fist-sized holes through its striped hide was not an issue. After all, Corbett wasn’t interested in acquiring a pristine tiger skin—he was trying to stop a serial killer.
With his rifle and customary three cartridges in hand—two for the twin barrels and one for an emergency—Corbett joined the Tahsildar and the messenger, and the three of them sprinted in silence down the hill. For a few minutes there would have been no noise but the sound of footfalls on packed earth and their own harried breathing.
When they arrived at the village, just a few miles outside of Champawat proper, a riot of yelling and pleading broke loose, as the frantic residents attempted to explain all at once what had occurred. One man among them was able to help calm the hysteria, and it was he who Corbett asked for a full report. Taking Corbett aside, he pointed to a scattering of oak trees just two hundred yards from the village. The story that followed was achingly familiar. A small group had been collecting firewood beneath the trees for their midday meal, when the tiger had materialized and come tearing into the group like a covey of quail. The others screamed and ran for their lives as a lone girl was engulfed by its stripes and claws—the tiger latched onto her neck before spiriting her away into the depths of the forest. The wife of Corbett’s new confidant, who had been among the foraging party, pointed out the specific tree where the attack had occurred—she explained how they had not even seen or heard the tiger until the creature already had the poor girl in its jaws. The silence and suddenness of the attack are corroborated by the aforementioned June 7 article published in the The Pioneer, which describes how “about mid-day of the 11th some 25 women and girls were gathering leaves together when a tigress appeared, and, seizing a young girl, carried her off with hardly a sound.” It was a tragedy that no one saw—or heard—coming.
Telling all gathered to stay where they were, Corbett checked on his rifle and started across the exposed fields to the kill site.
Arriving at the tree, Corbett was struck by the lay of the land. It was, in his own words, “quite open,” and he found it “difficult to conceive how an animal the size of a tiger could have approached twelve people unseen, its presence not detected, until attention had been attracted by the choking sound made by the girl.” Later in his career, Corbett would become more intimate with the incredible ways in which man-eaters downed their human prey, but the Champawat was the first of its kind he had encountered. Unlike wolves, for example, tigers virtually never hunt in packs; they are not especially long-winded and seldom chase prey over long distances. Their chief weapon, rather, is stealth—coupled with an astounding burst of speed. Belly flattened to the ground, creeping up in small increments on padded feet, they are capable of making themselves hidden in grass that’s no more than knee-high.
Aiding them in their clandestine endeavors is one of the most effective sets of camouflage in the animal kingdom. The stripes of the tiger naturally break up its outline, blending seamlessly with the shadows of tall grasses and jungle leaves. Since most of its prey is color-blind, the tiger’s orange fur is not noticed, and for those animals that can see color—including humans—its tawny hues meld extremely well with crepuscular light. This inherent stealth capability, when partnered with a leap radius that can reach thirty feet, and a top speed close to forty miles per hour, means that the eventual strike—when it finally comes, for tigers are also nothing if not patient—is almost always a surprise, and blindingly fast. And with their propensity for attacking from a rear angle, it’s also very likely that in this case, the Champawat’s human victim never even knew what hit her. Perhaps the faintest of rustling when it launched from the ground, a soft puff of displaced air from its careening body, all registered in the back of the mind at nearly the same moment nature’s nearest equivalent to a short-range missile exploded upon its target.
And the evidence of that collision between predator and prey was right there beneath the oaks for Corbett to see. The exact spot where the girl had been killed was marked by a fresh pool of blood and a broken necklace of bright azure beads; the moment of her death, at least in Corbett’s mind, was rendered starkly by that sickening contrast of crimson upon blue. No doubt swallowing down a lump of fear, and perhaps some inklings of nausea too, Corbett raised his rifle and followed the tiger’s tracks, which were interrupted at steady intervals by splashes of blood where the girl’s head had hung down from the tiger’s mouth.
After half a mile of steady tracking, he came across the girl’s sari, and at the top of the following hill, her skirt, both evidently ripped off by the tiger as it prepared to feed. From there, the drag marks took him to a thicket of blackthorn, from which strands of something long and dark were dangling and billowing from the stickers. Corbett stopped to examine one, puzzling over the peculiar moss, until he realized it was not moss at all. It was the girl’s hair, which had snagged on the branches as the tiger passed.
Sickened and saddened by the sight, irrefutable evidence of the horror that had passed through the brambles only minutes before, Corbett was steeling himself for a prolonged pursuit into the brush when he heard it—the sound of feet, approaching fast from the rear.
There was no time to think, no time to plan. Time only for instincts, honed from all those years spent hunting in the jungles of Kaladhungi and the forests near Nainital. Corbett turned on a pivot, rifle at the ready, knowing one shot was all he would likely get off, and that he’d be lucky to get even that.
Alas, there was no tiger, and his fingers must have quivered for an instant before releasing whatever feeble amount of slack the twin triggers gave. Running up behind him was a man from the village, oblivious to just how close he had come to having two barrels unloaded upon him. He had been following right on the hunter’s trail, his own beaten-up rifle swinging clumsily in his hands. Corbett’s initial reaction was one of anger, as he had—in addition to almost blowing a local resident in half—explicitly asked that everyone stay put in the village until he had located the tiger. But his new companion, a patwari, or low-level village official, named Jaman Singh, informed him that the Tahsildar had sent him, as one of the few men in legal possession of a rifle, to go help the sahib—a gesture that Corbett apparently appreciated in spirit, no matter how misguided it may have seemed. Giving in, Corbett asked the village patwari to at least remove his heavy boots, which he feared would make too much noise in the forest, and that he keep his eyes behind them in case the Champawat circled back and attacked them from the rear. After all, two sets of eyes were better than one—particularly when a potential tiger ambush was involved.
Pushing on through the stinging nettles and scratching burrs, Corbett and his new companion followed the blood trail as it turned sharply to the left before plunging into a ravine choked with bracken and wild ringal bamboo. Then into a steep watercourse, scattered with loose stones and earth that the tiger had upturned on its way down—they were only seconds behind it now and they knew it. The watercourse became even steeper yet, cascading ever-downward and filling the ravine with a steady rush of falling water, amid which any number of muffled forest sounds could have been a lurking tiger. With the sheer rock walls rising on either side, they were easy targets should the tiger turn around—this they knew as well—and as the walls closed in the deeper they ventured into the gorge, the more perilous, perhaps even suicidal, their pursuit became.
The village patwari tugged on Corbett’s sleeve on multiple occasions, his whispers wracked by sharp tremolos of fear, informing Corbett that h
e could hear the tiger, behind them, all around them. It was becoming increasingly clear that the patwari, despite his possession of a rifle and admirable determination, was a town dweller with very limited experience hunting, and that he was proving to be more of a liability than an asset. Corbett had a deep mistrust of guns in the hands of others, and an even firmer unwillingness to put others in harm’s way. Arriving at last at this inevitable conclusion, he stopped at a steep stone spire, some thirty feet high, and told his companion to climb the pinnacle of rock and wait for him there. The patwari did so, and upon giving the signal that he had arrived at the top, Corbett went on alone, his thin, rubber-soled shoes angling and slipping over the wet rock as he sidestepped and shuffled his way down the vertiginous ravine—which, after a straight, steep shot of a hundred yards, ended at a dark stone hollow with a pool of still water at its middle.
The tiger was gone, but traces of its feeding were not. Rifle poised, ears pricked, Corbett inspected the site, discovering as he did so a viscerally disturbing scene. Tigers usually feed near water—that was not unusual—but the sight that met his eyes was one that would be imprinted onto his memory:
The tigress had carried the girl straight down on this spot, and my approach had disturbed her at her meal. Splinters of bone were scattered round the deep pugmarks into which discoloured water was slowly seeping, and at the edge of the pool was an object which had puzzled me as I came down the watercourse, and which I now found was part of a human leg. In all the subsequent years I have hunted man-eaters, I have not seen anything as pitiful as that young comely leg—bitten off a little below the knee as clean as though severed by the stroke of an axe—out of which the warm blood was trickling.
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