Shikar Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  Waiting till the procession had passed, I took my rifle and slipping from the tree followed cautiously in their wake.

  I had not far to go. Reaching a clearing, the procession stopped. As the dancers and musicians advanced, each threw his burning torch on the ground and in a little while there were a heap of torches burning fiercely, around which the whole procession gathered.

  Concealing myself in the bushes a short distance out of the circle of light I watched in amazement the strange rites that now followed.

  First of all the two bodies were laid side by side on the ground close to the fire. Two of the dancers more grotesquely decorated than the others and whom I rightly conjectured were high priests of this strange sect, advanced and raising each body in turn, set the pole into a hollow in the ground, so that the bodies now confronted the dancers in an upright position. The instant the firelight fell on their faces I realised with a thrill of horror that both men were alive, but so drugged or otherwise stupefied that they hung loosely in their fastenings swaying like drunken beings.

  No sooner was this done, then the whole circle of dancers sprang into activity. Round and round the fire they whirled, chanting a queer plaintive refrain, punctuated with staccato beats from the muffled drums. For a long while they danced till at last weary with their exertions, they gave a final shout and settled down once more.

  The two priests now advanced. Going up to the captives they raised their heads and forced them to drink some concoction which they poured from a pitcher brought by one of the dancers. Whatever the drink was, it must have been a powerful restorative. Within five minutes both men were fully awake and conscious of all that was taking place round them.

  What, I wondered, would be the ultimate fate of these two men. It was not likely that in a district so near to British administration they would attempt a cold-blooded murder, but had I known what was to follow, death would have been a merciful release.

  Seeing that both men were now perfectly conscious, one of the priests arose and taking a long sharp knife in his hands advanced towards his victims. I fingered my trigger uneasily, uncertain to fire or not, but determined at all cost to save the lives of those two servants of mine. Instead of injuring them, however, he commenced a long harangue. Pointing frequently towards the prisoners and then into the forest in the direction in which I had come, he seemed to be working his followers up to some momentous decision and he was not long in gaining their unanimous support. The moment he stopped, with one voice, the whole tribe chanted "Maro, maro" (Kill, kill) and, with a swiftness that completely deceived me, the priest struck twice, and the red blood gushed down the chests of the victims. Quickly I slung my rifle round, bringing the foresight to bear on the murderer. But from the moment of that one fierce shout and the anguished cry from the two prisoners, not a further sound could be heard. A strange tense expectant hush seemed to fill the forest. On the face of the two prisoners were depicted the most abject terror, their wounds, probably superficial, bled profusely, but the men were unaware of the blood, instead they stood staring before them into the forest waiting for some awful apparition to come,— and come it did.

  Swiftly, silently, remorseless as death itself came a queer sinister shape. Not two feet high, semi-human in form, its hair, straggling and entangled all over its body, its face hideous, with two great eyes darting out of cavernous sockets, it leapt and gambolled out of the forest, into the clearing and with a shrill maniacal laugh stood confronting the two prisoners.

  So hideous, so repulsive was this awful creature, that my rifle forgotten I stood staring, unable to believe my eyes; and then started a dance the likes of which I have never seen.

  Whirling slowly at first, advancing, retreating, this grotesque human shape, fluttered up and down before the terror-stricken silent men. Gradually the pace increased, a drum. commenced to throb gently, swifter grew the dance and swifter, louder grew the drums and louder the chanting of the priests joined the roll of the drums, slowly, one by one, the other dancers joined in, the spectators swayed by a common impulse beat time to the ever swelling music, and the prisoners, hypnotised by the rhythm of sound and movement round them, sank lower and lower, till they hung inert, their bonds alone supporting them.

  The end came suddenly, dramatically. A rifle shot rang out a sharp command, and a thin line of khaki-clad figures broke from the cover of the jungle and surrounded the dancers.

  In a moment pandemonium broke loose. Surprised, startled and wholly unprepared, the dancers and priests broke and fled for the cover of the surrounding forests. Anxious to join the melee I broke from the cover of the forest and rushed towards the fire. At that instant I came face to face with one of the presiding priest.

  With a fine disregard for sacerdotal procedure, I jammed my rifle butt into his ribs that he went down with a groan and stayed there. Reaching my two servants, I hastened to undo their bonds, and while engaged in this task was suddenly seized from behind and swinging round found myself face to face with a young Police Officer.

  "Well I'm damned. If it isn't the very man we are looking for," he cried with surprise. "What on earth are you doing here?"

  "Can't you see," I said, "Getting these two poor devils out of the scrape they have got into."

  Mutual explanation followed and I learned that from the moment I had left Daltonganj I had been shadowed by members of this tribe under the mistaken impression that I was an Excise Officer on one of my periodical raids into the interior. The guide had been overpowered and carried off the first night in the hope that without a guide further progress would be impossible, but as I continued, all unknown to me, in the right direction, my servant Mohamed Ali suffered the same fate.

  Anxious to avenge themselves on what they considered were informers of the Police, these two men were taken into the heart of the forest and handed over to the "Soul Catchers". The rites I witnessed were explained to me by the young Police Officer who had arrived on the scene so opportunely.

  The men were first drugged with a native concoction containing bhang. On arrival at the scene of operations, they were given an antidote and restorative, and later branded in the chest by the priests, so that they were marked men for life. Next a strange half-demented creature, who lived in that part of the forest and who was credited with supernatural powers, danced before the victims who were thus hypnotised and in this condition made to believe that their souls had left them and were in the keeping of the "Soul Catchers." They were seldom harmed physically, but were socially ostracised, driven from village to village and refused even the ordinary necessities of life. The hardships of such an existence usually drove these poor creature crazy or they died from starvation and neglect. None dared to assist them for fear of incurring the enmity of the "Soul Catchers" themselves. There was, however, a method of release and many took this course. By selling all they possessed, they would raise the necessary amount of money needed and this on being paid to the high priest of the sect, a ceremony was performed by which the unfortunate victim regained his soul and his position in society. Although in the turmoil that followed the first rush of the Police, the strange creature I had seen, eluded the troops and disappeared in the forest, the high priest of the sect I had knocked senseless with my rifle, was secured and duly appeared in Court. .I will never forget the sensation he created, when in his full regalia he appeared in the dock to answer the charges against him. A though I formed the principal witness, he produced an alibi that was unshakable— in fact the whole village turned out en masse prepared to swear that on that particular night this self-same priest was asleep in his hut in the middle of the village and that the whole case was a Police plot brought up out of spite.

  He was eventually convicted and got three years hard and the tribe of "Soul Catchers" shifted to healthier quarters, but to this day I never visit Daltonganj and the neighbouring villages without a strange sensation of being watched and spied on.

  (1932)

  Encounters With Big Game

  By
'Surfield'

  he remark has often been made to me, "You survey people must get wonderful opportunities for big game shooting."

  Actually this is by no means the case. Big game shooting takes time; and the survey officer who is here today and gone tomorrow, has not the time to spare to follow up news of big game in his vicinity. He must hasten on to see the work of his next surveyor. It is inevitable, however, if one tours for months on end in the jungle, to have some encounters with big game; and such encounters are no less exciting for being unexpected.

  Wild elephants are common in many parts of Burma, and for long after my first arrival in the country, I was anxious to see something of them. For hundreds of miles I walked or rode through good elephant country without encountering one. Fresh tracks were frequently in evidence, but always the elephants had moved on a short time before and were nowhere to be seen. After a time I ceased to expect to see one. Then, as it so often does in the jungle, the unexpected happened.

  I was testing the work of a surveyor, and in company with his squad, we were walking along a level and fairly good jungle trail in single file. I led, closely followed by the surveyor, and the squad was a few yards behind. A crackling from a clump of bamboos a few yards away made me pause.

  "Is that an elephant?"

  "No, sahib, only monkeys," was the reply; and we went on.

  A few yards further on I caught sight of an object, about thirty-five yards from the path, which at first glance I took to be a large boulder. A second glance however showed it to be a solitary bull elephant slightly turned away, and apparently unconscious of our presence. I expected it to make off as soon as it heard us, but as we had no gun with the party it seemed just as well to try to slip by quietly and not disturb it. Before I could motion to those behind to be quiet, however, there was a loud exclamation from one of the Indian khalasis,

  "Hathi!"

  The sequel was as instantaneous as unexpected. The elephant swung round with a shrill trumpet, curled up its trunk and charged.

  It is said that provided the going is good, and not downhill, an active man can just keep ahead of a charging elephant. Whether this be true I cannot say, but after the first few yards I turned and saw the elephant on the trail about the same distance away, still coming after us. The party had scattered, half coming on with me and the remainder turning back; fortunately no one had a load which hampered running. Then we rounded a bend in the path, and the elephant crashed straight on into the jungle and we saw it no, more. Half an hour later stragglers and scattered equipment had been collected, and we continued on our way; but since then I have noticed that my wish to see wild elephants has considerably diminished.

  In some areas such encounters with rogue elephants are fairly frequent and during survey operations in the low hills of the Chindwin-Irrawaddi watershed, two wild elephants were killed and another wounded in one season, by surveyors acting purely in self-defence. On one occasion a surveyor and his squad were on a narrow ridge when they encountered and were charged by a wild elephant. The surveyor managed somehow to escape unharmed, but three of his men flung themselves in terror down the steep sides of the ridge, and had to be sent to hospital as the result of their injuries.

  It would be a mistake, however, to think that the majority of elephants, or even many of them will attack without provocation. This unpleasant habit is confined practically entirely to rogues, as solitary bulls are called who have been ousted from a herd by some successful rival. A herd of wild elephant will generally make off at the first sign of the approach of man.

  Just as vicious, and in some ways more deadly than any rogue elephant, is the hamadryad, or king cobra, fortunately rare in Upper Burma but not uncommon in the eastern foothills of the Arakan Yomas. This snake commonly attains a length of thirteen feet or more, and will attack at sight. Its speed makes any attempt to escape by running, useless. Unlike the elephant, I had no wish whatever to encounter a hamadryad, but it was not long before I did so.

  Walking along a narrow jungle trail behind a Burman guide, I suddenly became aware of the largest snake I had ever seen lying beside the path, its head pointed away and its tail not a yard from my feet. The markings on its back and the large hood put its identity at once beyond doubt. It was a very large hamadryad; and the guide had walked right past it within two feet of its head without noticing or disturbing it.

  In an instant I had turned about and run back for my shot gun, which was coming along with a coolie a few yards behind. Meanwhile the guide stopped and called out to ask the cause of the delay, and began idly to chop a bamboo with his dah. At once the snake was on the alert, and raised its head in readiness to strike. One glance was enough for the guide, who with an exclamation fled. The snake fortunately did not attack but remained with hood erected, and head swaying slightly backwards and forwards, the picture of malignant watchfulness. I rammed a No. 8 cartridge, the first that came to hand, into my gun and hurriedly fired. The range may have been too great for the small shot to be effective, or my aim uncertain, for the snake instead of collapsing, disappeared with a whirl of coils, into the undergrowth down the hillside, and was not seen again.

  The seaward slopes of the Arakan Yoma mountains, have a sinister reputation for man eating tigers. Near the crest of the main range there is a small rest-house which must be unique. It is surrounded by a tiger-proof fence. That his protection is necessary, was amply proved by the experience of a party of surveyors who camped a few miles away, one night in January 1929. Four of them were with their camp officer and squads, making a total of about forty men altogether. The surveyors and the officer were sleeping in tents or shelters of bamboo round the edge of the camp, and their khalasis and coolies lay on the ground in the centre, surrounded with a circle of fires.

  At midnight the camp was awakened by a sudden scream. A tiger had bounded through the circle of fires, seized a sleeping coolie and carried him off. The shouts of the others and the struggles of the man made the tiger drop him, only to pounce on him and knock him down again when he tried to escape. Again the man struggled free, and this time got back to his companions, badly mauled.

  The remaining hours of the night were hours of terror. The whole camp stood huddled together behind the circle of dying fires, for which no one dared to fetch more fuel. In the surrounding darkness, the tiger could be heard prowling about, waiting an opportunity to seize another victim; and on one occasion it actually entered a surveyor's tent and pulled about his bedding. With the coming of daylight the tiger went away, and the injured man was hurried down to the nearest hospital, a couple of marches away; but blood poisoning set in and he only survived the journey by a couple of hours.

  Nor was this the only victim of the man-eaters of those parts. A few days after the tragedy just related, a couple of Kachin coolies were sent by a surveyor, with a letter, to the camp headquarters at Sandoway. There were no villages for the first two marches, so they had to spend a night in the jungle. This was, however, nothing new to men born and brought up in the frontier hills, and following their usual custom they built a bamboo platform on a tree, seven or eight feet above the ground and went to sleep on it.

  Shortly before dawn, a tiger sprang on to the edge of the platform, seized one of the sleepers and pulled him to the ground; where the shouts of the other succeeded in driving it away. At dawn the wounded man took his enamel plate to serve as a basin, and went to a stream a few yards away to wash his wounds.

  After some time, as he did not return, his companion called to him, but received no reply. Again he called, but still there was no reply. Now thoroughly alarmed, the man got down from his tree, and ran down the trail, in search of help. After going five miles he met a party of villagers cutting bamboo, and returned with them. Going to the bank of the stream they found the last chapter of the tragedy clearly written in the sand- At the water's edge was the enamel plate and a leather purse, and leading from the spot were the pug marks of a large tiger. No trace of the body was ever found.

&
nbsp; In this area, about the same time a European camp officer witnessed a scene which must be rare, if not unique—that of a pair of tigers cooperating in hunting a barking deer. Early one morning, coming quietly over a rise, he caught sight of a tiger a short distance away crouching behind a bush. A moment later, a barking deer pursued by another tiger dashed past the spot. In an instant the first tiger had sprung on it and borne it to the ground. At the same time it saw the officer who had been joined by his men, and both tigers made off, leaving the deer on the ground calling out, but paralysed by a bite in the neck. The men ran forward, despatched the deer and bore it off in triumph, feeling for the first and only time during that anxious period, pleasantly disposed towards the tigers of the Arakan Yomas.

  In Upper Burma, tigers, though numerous, are seldom man-eaters; and except for carrying off an occasional mule, cause the surveyor little trouble. Should they take village cattle, the villagers retaliate by setting traps. These are of two types, either cross bows with poisoned arrows, or spring guns, set to go off with a trip wire, or actual traps, working on the principle of a mouse trap, to catch and crush the tiger.

  This setting of spring guns once led me into an adventure, which it is pleasant to look back on, but which I would not care to repeat. Survey operations were going on in the southern portion of the Somra Tract, a loosely administered tribal area, in the north-east of the Upper Chindwin district; and I had marched up to Dansagu, a fair sized Kuki village, perched on a hill-top at about 4,000 feet above sea level.

  The morning following my arrival, rain and low clouds made work impossible, and I had to remain in my tent. During the morning, news came that a tiger had killed a young mithun, one of the peculiar cattle of the Burma-Assam hills, half bison half domestic cattle; and at the request of the villagers I sat up for it that night. Luck was however against me, for the tiger under cover of the low clouds had returned to the kill during the daytime, and on my arrival, a couple of hours before sunset, there was nothing remaining of it but the head. An extremely uncomfortable wait over this, which voracious blood blister flies made a misery, proved fruitless.