by Ruskin Bond
On this night, as I came into Whistling Wood, an intermittent, fresh morning breeze was springing up from the river, and all around me the young saplings were dancing and bobbing to the soft music of the pipal tree. Quickly I passed through without hearing or seeing anything. On the far side of the wood, and almost backing on to it, was a field of groundnuts. Coming out into the open, I saw the hurricane lanterns among the crop winking through the thinning mist. I stopped to listen. Suddenly – and I did not see the direction from which they came – two jackals darted into the feeble circle of light thrown by the lantern nearest to me, about twenty-five yards off. Now jackals are another pest which attacks groundnuts, tearing up the nuts with their paws and eating them, and this field was, for some reason, more open to their visitations than any of the others.
For a moment I watched them idly. They were gambolling about round the edge of the feeble circle of light, and there was something very graceful about the way they played. Round and round they went – twisting and turning, rolling and wrestling; pausing, then dodging and chasing all over again. So full of life did they seem that I decided to forgive them. As I began to move off, I lit a cigarette, and as the match flickered, I thought idly that those animals played more like cats. . . .
. . . Cats!
And then I really looked at them. Cats they were: little yellow ones with black stripes. . . . Tiger cubs!
As soon as I was sure, I stood absolutely still. Where was their mother? Was she, in fact, already watching me? For up to that moment I had not been moving with a great deal of caution; and there was also that unfortunate cigarette. On the other hand she might not yet know of my presence – so I began to strain my ears to catch the slightest sound that might betray her. But that fresh breeze, playing with the leaves and trees, and boosting up the strains of Ave Maria from the wood behind me, was kicking up so much row that it must inevitably be masking any tiny sound that the tigress might make. Angry and frightened, I began to curse it heartily. But the next moment it told me where the Langra Tigress was.
The wind was blowing on to the right side of my face as I stood watching the cubs and listening. All at once – and it was but a fleeting impression – there whisked past my nostrils a distinct smell of tiger. There was no doubt about it – the scent of these animals cannot be confused with anything else on earth. Then, as if to confirm my nose, the tigress called sharply to her cubs from out of the darkness. That meant she had located me, or was, at least, very suspicious of some danger.
I raised the gun and switched on the torch. A light, I hoped, would confuse her. And being, most likely, right outside her experience, might persuade her to slink away with her precious brood without further incident.
Almost immediately I picked up her eyes in the beam of the torch. She was about thirty yards away. But the eyes were all I could see of her, because the torch batteries were becoming exhausted; they had just had a very hard night, and had not been new when I set out. The beam was just a dull yellow stab in the darkness with the eyes staring back from the end of it.
The tigress seemed to be moving very slowly: not directly towards me, but slightly and obliquely away. Without seeing her clearly, it was difficult to judge her intentions. Above all things I wanted to avoid risking a shot unless I had no other alternative. For it looked as if she was trying to make off. But I could not see her properly – if only the torch was a little brighter.
Automatically, with my left hand, I began to squeeze round the small switch which was strapped to the fore part of the gun: from past experience I knew that this treatment sometimes resulted in a brighter light, as occasionally the contacts became dirty. Still keeping the eyes in the centre of the beam, I began to squeeze harder.
I have never been able to account satisfactorily for what happened next: tensed up nerves certainly had something to do with it; that, and some unconscious sympathy shown by my right hand for what my left was doing – for, without in any way meaning to, I squeezed the right trigger.
Both recoil and report took me completely by surprise. And then, to my horror, as the noise of the explosion died away, I heard that low-velocity ball strike with a sickening smack ! As it did so, the eyes vanished.
Appalled at what I had done, I stood and kept the light on the spot where the tigress had been. There was neither sound nor movement. After some time I began to think I had dropped her dead in her tracks. And this would not have been too much of a fluke; for the range was just over thirty yards, and the torch was so fixed that the shot would have passed down the middle of the beam. I waited a good ten minutes and then began to move slowly forward. But when I came near to where she ought to have been lying, there was nothing there. Nor, when I cast the light farther afield, was there any sign of her. Then I began to think I had missed, and that the shot had hit something else.
Now, by all the usual rules of tiger-shooting, it was asking for trouble to follow her up at once. But those rules were for straight-forward, daytime hunting; the present circumstances were exceptional. It was still very dark, and the safest thing to do was to find the tigress before she recovered from the first shock of that bullet – if indeed she had been hit – and launched an attack. For there was no clue to where she was, and it was useless for me to think of running away until daylight – any direction might bring me straight on top of her. So I had little alternative but to continue the search.
Soon, I came upon the first blood, glistening in the soft glow of the torch, smeared on a few kakra leaves which had been rolled on. I set off slowly along the blood trail, which soon became very distinct. But every minute the torch was getting weaker; at times it started to flicker.
Almost without warning, I nearly stumbled right into her. Fortunately she gave herself away: there came a quick choking growl from a little way ahead, and when I whipped up the light I saw the Langra Tigress clearly for the first time that night. She was crouched, a little to my right and about seven yards away, her ears lying flat and her lips drawn back in a savage snarl. But before I had properly seen her and blinded her with the light, I knew she had seen me too. So I raised the gun quickly . . . and she sprang straight for the torch as I pulled both triggers.
Instinctively, even as I fired, I had known that this was coming: so I believe I had started to throw myself madly sideways and down as she was leaving the ground. But something, and I think it was one of her hindpaws, caught me and sent me sprawling backwards. I heard her land with a soft thud close behind me. I still cannot remember all I did, or even what went on during the next few confused seconds; but somehow I got the torch on her again, and she answered this with a choking, gasping roar which seemed to burst right in my face. Now she was on the ground with only her head and shoulders raised: obviously very badly wounded, but she was making a desperate and frantic effort to stand up – her great forepaws were clawing madly at the earth. Her hindlegs appeared to be useless; for the back part of her body was lying flat on the ground, and for all her furious attempts she was just dragging it slowly forward.
Keeping the light on her, I got quickly to my feet. All her violent, futile exertions told plainly of a broken back: a well-placed shot now would finish her. But the gun had only spent cases in the chambers. Never have I felt possessed of so many thumbs as I groped feverishly for cartridges. Right pocket, ball – left, buckshot . . . or was it the other way about . . .? For my jacket suddenly seemed to have gone crazy – then I found it was hanging in tattered shreds about me. Somehow the ammunition was found and rammed into the breeches. By this time, in spite of the intensely cold night air, sweat was streaming down my face, because all the time I had been frantically fumbling about, the tigress, like some fantastic horror out of a nightmare, had been striving violently to get at me. Then, as I roughly snapped the gun shut and jabbed the safety catch forward, she suddenly collapsed: her head dropped to the ground, and she began to gasp in great lungfuls of air.
She was obviously finished: but it seldom pays to be too sure of any tiger
that is still breathing. So, somewhat unsteadily, I crept round to her flank and put in another shot at the base of her skull. A little shiver ran through the massive body, then the mouth opened slowly, and – after a brief moment – as slowly closed for the last time. With a slight final tremor, the great head sank more firmly onto the ground.
Up to that moment I had acted like a man going through a fantastic dream, whose subconscious mind is telling him all the time that none of it is reality. Now it was over, my knees suddenly felt so weak I had to sit down on the ground. And to steady my nerves I lit a cigarette. While I was smoking it I surveyed the damage to my zip jacket – the front had been torn right down. The thick scarf which I wore underneath had taken most of the punishment; apart from a few scratches, I was unhurt.
I did not really deserve to get away so lightly: that first shot should never have been fired; there was no proper excuse for it at all. I am quite certain now that if I had not fired, the tigress would have left me alone; for she had already called to her cubs and, as far as I could see, was making off, taking her precious brood away from that strange light beyond which she could see nothing. And who knows how many times she had seen me about before? Perhaps, after all these months, I had become quite a familiar figure to her, unknown to myself. If this were true, then she might very well have possessed all those sporting qualities with which I had once credited her.
As I finished my cigarette, dawn was just painting the eastern sky with delicate hues of pink and lemon light. And as the new day began, I reflected that the night patrols were over at last. Looking back on it all, I could not truthfully say that I had enjoyed it, although I learnt a great deal. But when I thought of the tigress, and the boar that removed my pants, I realised that as a night hunter I still had a long way to go. For the encounters had been brought about by my own carelessness; and each time I had been more lucky than I deserved. So, all things considered, I cannot recommend night-shooting on foot unless you have to do it . . . even if you avoid making the fat-headed mistakes that I made.
Hugh Allen , August 1956, Blackwood's Magazine
'Sandy' Beresford's Tigerhunt
alter Beresford, known to his friends as 'Sandy' because of his reddish-yellow hair, but styled by the Government of Bombay as Mr Walter Trevelyn Beresford, District Superintendent of Police, Dharwar, lay in a long chair on the verandah of the traveller's bungalow at D——, some sixty miles from Dharwar cantonment. In front of him stretched a beautiful little lake, covered here and there with masses of water-lilies; in far corners of it dab-chicks disported themselves, while a bunch or two of teal and an odd 'spotbill' sneaked about, half hidden by the reeds. 'Sandy' had an excellent dinner and felt at peace with the world; moreover, that afternoon he had bagged his seventeenth panther.
The only fly in the ointment of his happiness was that he was alone. It was the first day of the Christmas holidays and he had expected his old friend Ford Halley, the D.S.P. of Belgaum, to be at D—— with him. On his arrival that morning at the bungalow, a telegram was handed to him. He opened it and read the following words:
'Very sorry. Detained by a murder case. Joining you tomorrow.'
Beresford was thus condemned to spend the next twenty-four hours alone. Happily Ford Halley would be there for Christmas; so the two friends would eat their Christmas dinner together. On Boxing Day the real business of the camp would begin. They would drive for a man-eating tiger that had been doing a lot of damage over an area of twenty miles round D——. Ford Halley was an old shikari and had at least a dozen tigers to his credit, nor was Sandy Beresford a new hand. He had killed a couple of tigers, two or three bears and sixteen panthers.
During breakfast which Beresford, after a long ride in his car, ate with a first class appetite, his orderly, who also did duty as shikari, came in a state of suppressed excitement. 'Wagh! Sahib! Wagh!' he half-whispered, half-hissed at his master.
Beresford sprang to his feet. 'Patayat Wagh (A Tiger)? or Biblia Wagh (A Panther)?'
'Mothe Thorile nahint. (It is not a tiger). Biblia Wagh ahe. (It is a panther).'
Beresford was at first disappointed, but on second thoughts felt a thrill of joy. If he got the panther it would make his seventeenth, only three short of twenty. Twenty panthers were quite a respectable total for a man of only thirteen years' service. He turned to his shikari: 'Well, Dhondu,' he said, 'how far-off is it?'
'Sahib, it is only the other side of the lake. It killed a young buffalo last night and dragged the kill under a big tree. I have had the kill tied with a rope to the trunk and if the Sahib is ready to come this afternoon about four, I shall have a machan (stand) built and come and fetch the Sahib.'
'Splendid!' said Beresford. 'I shall be ready all right. You had better go back now and rig up the machan, so that all work it requires may be finished before half past three. The panther might wake up then, and if he saw you at work I should get no chance of a shot.'
The shikari salaamed and vanished.
Beresford took his rifle from its case, a .400 Jeffery cordite, that would stop a charging elephant. He glanced down the barrels and satisfied himself that they were beautifully clean; he put the rifle to his shoulder once or twice to see that it came up all right. Next he took out his shotgun which, loaded with SS, he carried always as a second weapon. These preparations finished, he lay in his long chair and smoked and dozed until tea time. A little before four his shikari appeared and the two men went off together.
The shikari had not underestimated the distance. The spot where the kill lay was only half an hour's walk from the bungalow; and when Beresford reached there, he found the man whom the shikari had left in the machan in a great state of excitement. The panther, he said, had come and had looked at the dead buffalo from a distance of fifty yards. Then it had moved away. It was somewhere close by. The Sahib should get into the machan without delay.
Beresford, recognising the soundness of the advice, climbed as quickly as possible into his hiding place. Ten minutes later he saw dimly the outline of the panther, lying in some bushes fifty yards away. It was too difficult a shot to risk; so he waited. After some five to ten minutes, during which time Beresford's heart thumped so hard that he was afraid the panther would hear it, the brute rose and came towards the kill. It was evidently not very hungry; for instead of beginning at once to tear the flesh, it stood looking at the dead buffalo, as if uncertain with which bit to start its meal. Before it came to any decision, a bullet from Beresford's .400 rendered the question academic. The panther lay dead on its dead victim, of which it would never eat another mouthful.
Beresford came back in excellent spirits, the villagers carrying his seventeenth panther, fastened by its four feet to a long bamboo pole. He tubbed, changed and ate the dinner provided for him with a Spartan's appetite, although indeed his cook had served a meal that needed no hunger sauce. Beresford was now reclining in a long chair, as I have said, in the verandah of the bungalow and a golden coloured 'peg' lay within reach of his right hand.
As he lay, he suddenly began to feel creepy. He remembered a story narrated to him, when a boy, of his grandfather General Beresford. The latter, when a young officer, had, shortly after the Mutiny, been posted to Dharwar, and had gone on a shooting trip to the very bungalow where 'Sandy' now resided. He had a horrible experience. Lying in a long chair in the verandah where his grandson now lay, he had gone asleep. By him reclined his friend, Captain Richardson, afterwards General Sir Archibald Richardson. He, too, had dropped off. General Beresford had been awakened by a sharp pain in his left arm. Looking at it, he had seen a tiger standing beside him. It had seized his arm in its mouth and was dragging at it. General Beresford had kept his head and had called to Richardson to fetch a rifle from within and shoot the brute. As the tiger was pulling at his arm, General Beresford had to go with him, for he feared that if he resisted the tiger would kill him outright. He rose and walked alongside the tiger through the compound – a via dolorosa as terrible as any in history – h
oping always that Richardson would be able to put the rifle together and load it before they reached the compound wall. The idea that Richardson would show the white feather never entered his head; but General Beresford knew that on reaching the compound wall the tiger would take his body into its mouth to leap the wall. He walked step by step, as slowly as he dared. Suddenly he heard a cheery voice and the steps of his friend racing behind him. The tiger seemed utterly contemptuous of the newcomer and stopped near the wall, preparatory to gathering its victim's body within its mighty jaws. The moment's pause proved its undoing. Richardson, reaching the tiger's side, knelt down; aiming at its heart, he pulled the trigger. The brute's grip on General Beresford's arm relaxed and it rolled over amid a cloud of smoke. It was stone dead. Richardson had saved his friend's life; but General Beresford's left arm had had to be amputated; and Sandy remembered distinctly the empty sleeve that his grandfather used to wear pinned across his breast.
Sandy looked nervously around and felt very much inclined to run into his bedroom and bolt the door. Then he pulled himself together, smiled at his fears and said half aloud: 'The modern tiger has far too wholesome a respect for the Englishman to behave in that truculent fashion.' To support his statement, he drained the whisky and soda at his side, settled himself once more in his chair and a few minutes later fell fast asleep.
He had a ghastly dream. He dreamt that he had gone to bathe in the lake in front of the bungalow. As he entered the water one of his sepoys ran up and begged him not to, as it was full of 'maghars'. Beresford laughed at the warning and began swimming in the lake. Suddenly an acute pain in his left arm made him realise that the sepoy's warning was one to have been followed. An alligator had seized him by the arm and was trying to pull him under. Struggle as Sandy Beresford might, he was helpless. He cried aloud for help and in doing so woke up, the perspiration streaming down his face.