Again, the grass drowned our elephants; the sounds of their ghostly passage through the whispering clumps strangely accentuated the absence of the tiger’s mind-shattering roars with which I expected our intrusion to be greeted any minute. But the jungle mercifully thinned before us. As more sand than soil appeared below our elephant, Ram Singh brought his mount to stand close alongside ours. A dry watercourse stretched across the grassland at this point and my brother and I found ourselves wildly looking around for the tiger that we fully expected our elephants to have driven out into the open ahead of them. The wide bed of the dry watercourse was flanked by thin sanded strips devoid of any cover, and in the centre, where the clear mountain water might once have flowed, stood that same interminable grass, stretching hay-gold and vivid green, over a tract of considerable length all along the watercourse. The Durbar Sahib was listening intently and motioning us to get a grip over our runaway senses, indicating that we, too, should listen carefully.
Suddenly the sun-baked stillness below us was faintly broken by a crackling, chewing sound; a very faint, but unmistakable noise that throbbed, floating out above the tall grass, and quickly conveyed its grim message to our straining ears. The tiger had perhaps killed during the night, dragging its kill to that dense tract of grass in the watercourse below. It had eaten and then slaked its thirst from the stream on its trail behind us and had returned before we had sighted its pugs to eat its kill again. There it lay, deep in the grass, engaged in a majestic feast. Had we talked loudly, or rushed our elephants through the grass, we would not be standing safely above the overgrown watercourse regarding the tangled spot from where the crackling sounds of bones being chewed now emanated. The aura of apparent safety was dispelled no sooner than felt, when a sudden lull occurred in the sounds being made by the tiger as it ate. My rifle involuntarily came up in my hands, the gleaming butt poised along my arm as the thought crossed my mind that the tiger had, perchance, sensed us and our elephants.
Our luck held true and beside me Durbar Sahib was swiftly and silently indicating to Ram Singh to prepare to beat the grass with his trained she-elephant. According to his whispered instructions, our mahout then began to edge our mount slowly along the watercourse, in the opposite direction from where Ram Singh’s elephant was to commence beating. On padded feet, the elephant moved further up, until the dense clumps of grass fell away below and a thinly overgrown area, with sparse clumps here and there, appeared along the watercourse. Guns trained, we took up our station there to take a certain shot at the tiger, when it broke cover ahead of Ram Singh’s elephant. We could faintly sense it in the distance, moving through the grass and inexorably towards the tiger.
I scanned the grass jungle far and wide, concentrating my scrutiny on the dense area through which the tiger was expected to come. A tall-tufted spear of grass bent, shook, then suddenly straightened in the densely growing clumps across the sand from our elephant. Surely it could not be the tiger, for Ram Singh’s elephant was still a considerable distance away from where lay the marauder’s kill. I continued to look in the direction of the beating elephant. Suddenly Durbar Sahib was nudging me urgently. I glanced sideways at him and was taken aback to see him, gun to his shoulder, pointing the barrel in the thicket of grass immediately ahead of us. With bent brow, he was trying to draw my attention to the spot by alternately jerking his head and the twin barrels of the Paradox to where he wanted me to look. I quickly realized that he had spied our quarry and wished me to take the first shot at the tiger with my heavier and better-suited .470. I must have burst a blood vessel in my efforts to spot the tiger, camouflaged as it must have been in those vertical clumps of gold and brown grasses that merged so well with its coat. I realized I could not see it and softly asked Durbar Sahib, ‘Where?’ A quick frown of impatience crossed his brow. In answer, he clutched the Paradox to his shoulder and shot swiftly downwards into the very edge of the thick clumps where they trooped down in a dense mass to the sanded clearing’s edge above which our elephant stood.
Even as the Paradox shell exploded, I saw the tiger. Not a roar, grunt or howl of protest escaped those defiantly drawn lips as the deadly projectile struck the tiger where it stood, looking about at the clearing whose fringes it had stopped at after abandoning its meal when it sensed the beating elephant. I saw the tiger flinch and in the same instant it turned about and rushed through the grass. I followed the agitated shaking of the grass as the wounded tiger thrashed its way through the endless cover. So swift had been its retreat and so well concealed its body as it fled that I was unable to depress the trigger of my rifle. All this had happened within the space of three or four seconds.
I found myself looking askance at my elder brother who declared that the tiger had got away into the very depths of the grass tract. As I had not followed the signs of the tiger’s hectic passage completely, I did not voice an opinion. Durbar Sahib had, in the meantime, broken open the Paradox, extracted the spent cartridge case, inserted a fresh, brass-jacketed one in its place and with gun held in one hand, was shading his eyes with the other as he looked intently at the fringe of the grass jungle about two hundred metres away from our swaying elephant. Untrained to this particular sport and far past its prime, our mount had become increasingly nervous as the events of the past few moments had fleeted by. Its unsteadiness only heightened the confusion in our minds about the wounded tiger’s whereabouts.
Goaded on by its mahout, Ram Singh’s elephant came trampling out of the grass, hurrying across the sand towards us. Ram Singh’s uncertain opinion about where the tiger had exactly escaped only added to our own confused, contradictory ideas on the subject. Then pointing to a patch of comparatively green jungle of newly-sprouted, man-high grass that he had been studying consequent to his shot at the tiger, Durbar Sahib spoke up: ‘I have followed the wounded tiger’s movements till that point. It has not emerged from that green patch and I’m sure it is recuperating in there.’
Objections and counter-suggestions at once flew from all of us at him, even though he seemed surer in his belief than we in ours, for none of us had seen what he had. Smiling faintly, he then suggested that we send our mahout to scout that particular green patch. The mahout, too, seemed to concur with our views and casually climbed down and began to walk along the edge of the grass forest, going boldly towards the green area of new grass. When still a few feet short of his objective, he came to a sudden halt, rose up on his tip-toes to peer forwards and just as suddenly lost all his previous cockiness. Visibly agitated, he scuttled back across the sand, perspiring freely, reached the elephant and clambered atop its neck, all in one rush! His mouth nervously working, he gasped that he had clearly heard what might be the wounded tiger’s growl of warning and, unable to catch sight of the beast, had fled. I tried to coax him to explore that area again, but baring his chest he declared that we might as well shoot him, but go again he certainly would not!
That sealed it. The tiger seemed to be in that green patch and, being wounded, would certainly launch a deadly charge at any intruding human or elephant. A pall of tense silence descended over us, as we looked about uncertainly at the prospect ahead.
Then Durbar Sahib’s gentle, unruffled voice sliced through the miasma of doubt that held us immobile. He told Ram Singh and his attendant shikari to get down and set fire to the grass at various points around the green tract where the tiger lay hidden. I could not help marvel at the fact that, under the circumstances, this perhaps was the least risky method of bringing out the wounded tiger. His bidding done, we watched the grass crackle and smoke as the drier clumps began to burn. The flames swiftly spread towards the green area, and with tracker and shikari safely mounted, we put a gap between the two elephants and waited for the tiger to come out. Do not think us wanton in setting fire to a part of the forest. Embedded deep in the protective soil, the roots of the elephant grass do not burn and new shoots spring up even more firmly over the ashes of the browned, dried stems that have burnt out.
I watched
the fire spread towards the green patch. But the tiger did not break out of it and soon the fire fizzled out at the green area’s periphery, for the succulent, new stems did not ignite. My brother and I both turned to scoff at Durbar Sahib, as it was now proved to our minds that the tiger had never been lying in there. Our not-so-cocky mahout looked disbelievingly at us. In reversal of his earlier stance, he believed, along with Durbar Sahib, that the tiger definitely lay in that green area. He was sure that it had growled at him when he had been scouting it for us. A good hour had elapsed since then, but the menace of that one growl was still fresh in his memory.
The sun was well past midday. As we stood softly debating back and forth, I began to steel myself for the only drastic course of action now open to us if we were to secure our trophy at all. There was nothing more to do than go in directly after the wounded tiger and bag it, even as it charged. An invitation to death most likely, but I had done it before, and if it was now necessary, I knew I would not shirk from it, regardless of damage to man and elephant. My brother asked Durbar Sahib if he had hit the tiger properly enough. Durbar Sahib briefly shook his head, saying he was not sure, as the tiger had been looking about before stepping out and may have taken a half-step forward as he had fired, so the bullet might have missed the shoulder and entered the tiger through its upper mid-section. It was one of those rare times when I had seen Durbar Sahib uncertain about his aim and it made the deadlock worse. A silent look passed between my brother and I. He began to ask Ram Singh to keep his elephant close to ours and told him we would go into the grass after the tiger. Durbar Sahib looked up at us and said, ‘No need. Fire a few shotgun shells into that green area and out he will come.’ We did just that.
Our inexpert elephant was moved away from the watercourse to stand well in the open where villagers had cleared the grass jungle for the purposes of cultivation. Ram Singh was deputed to approach as closely as possible to the green patch on his trained elephant and then fire shotgun birdshot into the grass where the tiger supposedly lay sheltering. Even as our elephant began going away from the bank of the watercourse, I could see Ram Singh changing the cartridges in his shotgun, his grim face curiously alight with eagerness. When our elephant reached the middle of the cleared field, its mahout turned it about to face once again that green area of grass.
The tiger would be in range of our rifles when it charged out towards Ram Singh. Everything for us would depend on the tiger’s distance from the beating elephant when the charge did come and on the she-elephant’s behaviour in repulsing the attack. Allow me to tell you that no matter how well-trained, the elephant is a queerly unpredictable creature when faced with danger. It might decide to fight and kill, as it rarely loses a battle. Or it might decide to run and flee, and no amount of goading, coaxing or tempting will take it back to the place where it lost its nerve.
I could clearly see Ram Singh’s mahout forcing the she-elephant onward into the half-burnt area of grass that fringed the green patch. As it stepped into the green stems that reached half-way up its body, the elephant stopped and began stamping the ground with one foreleg while its trunk, curled at the tip into a defensive club, knocked against the ground. On its back, Ram Singh rose up on his knees and emptied both barrels of birdshot into the depths of the green cover. Then he grabbed the spare shotgun from the shikari next to him. After two more shots, the tiger roared, a cataclysmic sound that rose up above the grass and rent the still, hot air to reach us with undiminished fury. Designed to freeze the very marrow in its victim’s bones, the angry, attacking roar of a charging tiger once heard can never be forgotten. I could see Ram Singh flounder on the elephant’s back, as his mount suddenly turned and bolted into the depths of the dry grass. Of the tiger we had no sign, for instead of leaping up at the elephant, it was now chasing the stampeding pachyderm through the grass. Then we saw it, as the tiger sprang upon the elephant’s rump, sticking to the elephant’s hindquarters with bunched backlegs and trying desperately with extended forelegs and claws to propel itself onto the elephant’s back and decapitate Ram Singh with perhaps a single blow of its paw.
The elephant’s rigorous training mercifully came into play and I could see that it was systematically trying to shake off the tiger. By bending its backlegs and straightening up with tremendously powerful jerks, it swung this way and that, keeping the tiger busy, digging a surer foothold into its hindquarters, but not for long. Soon the growling tiger fell down into the tall grass and with redoubled speed, the elephant resumed its flight, this time angling away from the grass in the watercourse and onto our part of the bank, where unmindful of iron goad, gesticulating mahout or clinging riders, it determinedly headed towards the camp! That was the last we saw of it for the day.
The wounded tiger had fallen off into the very depths of the tall, dense grass, and with our trained elephant having opted out of the fray, we felt well nigh hopeless on our cantankerous old mount. Indeed, the chances of flushing out the tiger seemed bleak. The sun, lowering in a burst of mellow-golden flash towards the western rim of the grasslands, decided the next step for us. Unanimously, we thought it best to call it a day. I could not help feeling that the tiger had got the better of us and that was the last we would ever see of it.
Early the next day, Durbar Sahib went off with Ram Singh on one of the two elephants and tried to locate the tiger again. But this time the elephant persistently kept out of the grass and would not even cross the sandy strip towards that fateful thicket in the middle of the watercourse. When they returned crestfallen to the camp, the evening fires were being lit, and we tried to dissuade Durbar Sahib from attempting anything foolhardy. But he simply sipped his drink and did not say a word. Like all true predators he seemed coiled, like a spring, and waiting.
For the next two days, we shot a variety of birds and animals from elephant back through those incredible grasslands. We saw no sign of the wounded tiger, or of any tiger for that matter. One afternoon, the elephants again refused to cross over the sands of the watercourse into the grass thickets where the wounded tiger had been lost. On the morning of the third day, we broke camp, and looking for sport along the way to the next campsite, we decided to go the distance on our elephants, having sent off the baggage and our men early at daybreak.
The tracts of grass most likely to hold game lay along the running stream in whose damp sands we had spied the tiger’s tracks. The way to our next camp also ran alongside the same stream, and when our elephants emerged from the tall grass onto the stream’s bank, their mahouts began to lead them through the scantier grass clumps upstream towards our next objective. I found something vaguely familiar about our surroundings. Looking around I soon saw that we were passing the point where only a few days ago we had crossed over on our elephants chasing after the tiger that was by now certainly recovered and far away. Beside me, Durbar Sahib was glancing wistfully at the tangled grass forest through which lay the way to that dry watercourse where we had lost the wounded tiger. I could see him silently debating with himself. He looked up again at the forests across the stream, glanced across at my elder brother, and when he caught my eye, he said softly, ‘Let us divert towards that dry watercourse. I have a feeling that this time we might locate the tiger.’
My elder brother shook his head in silent negation and simply said that we should not waste the day and get along to our next camp. I, too, wished to explore the grasslands further up the stream and said so to Durbar Sahib. The mahout looked startled at the briefest mention of the wounded tiger.
‘There are enough jungles along that dry nullah and prospects just as promising. Besides, we’ll get to camp even faster along that way,’ Durbar Sahib said, unable now to keep the irritation from showing in his voice.
We dithered, but his suggestion was sound, so we relented. Our elephants crossed the water and thrashed their way through the grass and we were soon there. Durbar Sahib craned his neck and drew in his breath sharply. He seemed to have smelt something. Then he told Ram Singh to take his e
lephant into that fateful grass overgrowing at the centre of the sanded watercourse. I watched as the she-elephant climbed down the shelving earthen bank and began to step warily towards the dense grass cover. A step further towards the first few clumps and it was nervously turning back. Atop it, Ram Singh joined forces with the mahout, goading, pummelling and urging, as they tried their best to make it go forward into the grass. It was no use. Soon the she-elephant was standing beside ours, blowing through its trunk and unsteadily swinging about as the mahout tried to soothe its temper with cool commands.
Then working on the principle that the she-elephant might feel braver in company, we tried to take both the elephants into the grass. But on its very fringes they baulked in unison and fled towards the safety of the bank where they were controlled with some difficulty and lot of discomfort. Thus thwarted, our mahout began to lead our mount along the nullah’s edge, intending no doubt to resume our journey to the next camp. We had barely passed the open reclaimed area when we came upon a large herd of cattle placidly grazing along the fringes of another great tract of elephant grass. A group of six village lads, led by an eighteen- or twenty-year-old youth, interrupted their play and stood around leaning on their staves, attentively watching us pass. Preoccupied as he had been with seeking another method to locate the tiger in that grass, this was too much of a chance for Durbar Sahib to miss. He called out to the young man who led the cow-herders. His voice curiously gay with false light-heartedness, he asked if he and his companions would like to help beat the grass in the river. Very calmly he told them that at the end of the beat they would be given meat from any game animals that they drove out and we shot down.
The Wildest Sport of All Page 19