Shikar Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  During the next few days work took me elsewhere; but on my return, just before dark one evening, I was told that in my absence the village had been practically besieged by, not one, but a family of tigers. Two more mithun, a couple of pigs and goats had been taken, the last named from right under houses in the village, and the villages were in a great state of alarm. Like all the hill people of the eastern frontier, Kukis are very superstitious, and they attributed their present misfortune to the displeasure of the local nats, the spirits who haunt the jungles on the lookout for causes of offence. As the attitude of these people towards the survey had from the first been somewhat uncertain, this state of mind was most undesirable. They might easily decide that our work was the cause of the displeasure of the nats, and this would lead to endless complications.

  The night before my return a mithun had been killed in a clearing about a thousand feet below the village, and dragged into a patch of very dense jungle, where half of it had been eaten. The villagers had during the day set two ancient flintlock muzzle-loading guns over the remains, with trip wires across the most likely approaches. There was only one muzzle-loader in Dansagu, so the second had been borrowed from a neighbouring village, thus denuding the place of local fire-arms.

  At about seven-thirty that night, the stillness; was broken by a loud report from the darkness below, followed a few minutes later by another report. Both guns had gone off, but whether monkeys, passing deer or pig, or the tigers had fired them, only the morning would show.

  Shortly after daylight the matter was settled. Two individuals accompanied by a crowd of villagers presented themselves at my tent, and informed me that they had been down to the kill to investigate. A tiger had been wounded and was still in the vicinity of the guns, and they had disturbed another tiger a short distance away. One of the men was bleeding from several gashes in his legs and cheek and I thought at first that he had been mauled; but his injuries turned out to have been the result of a fall during a too hasty flight from the vicinity of the wounded tiger.

  The villagers asked me to go down and finish off the tiger and enable them to recover their guns. This placed me in a dilemma. To follow one's own wounded tiger on foot through dense jungle is bad enough, but one at least has the feeling of performing a duty; to go after a wounded tiger for which one is in no way responsible is much worse. I had once before had occasion to follow one up and had no wish to repeat the performance. On the other hand the villagers seemed to have such unlimited faith in my shooting powers that I hadn't the face to admit that I was frightened; and in any case it was very desirable to do something towards allaying their superstitious fears about these particular tigers. After some hesitation I decided to go, having first stipulated that I would keep the skin, a proposal to which I thought the villagers agreed almost too readily.

  The next move was to the village where we collected half a dozen spears with which I armed the bravest looking men. Then we set off down the trail to the clearing, my two informants acting as guides. After a short way we left the path, and after fifteen minutes were approaching the spot through jungle so thick that it was impossible to see more than five yards ahead. I liked the affairs less and less, but it was now too late to turn back. Then to my relief, light appeared ahead and we found ourselves on the edge of a small ravine running diagonally down the steep hillside.

  At the same moment, the silence was broken by a reverberating growl from a thick clump of grass just beyond the ravine. We halted abruptly and assumed the defensive, expecting to be charged; but after half a minute the sound ceased. The growl of a wounded tiger at close quarters is extraordinarily awe inspiring; it is not very loud but it gives the impression of enormous power. We waited a little longer and then crossed the ravine higher up. The tiger was now about forty yards below, on the far side of the patch of grass. In the next few minutes something would happen; we were all keyed up to the highest pitch.

  We now formed a compact line, with the spearmen at either side and myself in the centre. Cautiously we moved forwards down the hill, our senses strained to detect the slightest sound or movement from in front. After what seemed hours, but must in reality have been only a few minutes, someone spotted a patch of dull red through the grass—the tiger's shoulder. I quickly put a shot into it, and was answered by a roar before which the line shrank away; then silence once more. Again a cautious advance, and then we came on the tiger lying stretched out at its last gasp. A final shot finished it off. To my great disappointment it turned out to be not the mother, but a three-quarter grown cub. This, however, made no difference to the villagers, whose return with the dead tiger slung on a pole, resembled a triumphal procession. That evening the event was celebrated with drinking and revelry which were kept up long into the night.

  The tigress and the other cub still remained in the vicinity and after a few days, there were further losses of pigs and goats. A fortnight later I was camped once again just outside Dansagu, when the alarming news was received that a raiding party had come over the border from Manipur with the object of securing a couple of heads which the nats had demanded. The previous day it had been seen near a village seven or eight miles away, but had since disappeared. The inhabitants of Dansagu were in a state of great alarm, and would not leave their village, except in large parties.

  My camp was situated a couple of hundred yards below the village, and at dusk all the villagers turned in and barricaded themselves into their houses. It seemed most improbable that the raiding party would attempt anything in the vicinity of an official known to be armed, so my camp turned in without taking any special precautions. I personally felt sceptical about the story of the headhunters and was soon fast asleep.

  About midnight I was awakened by a shout from the next village, about three-quarters of a mile away across the valley. In a few moments it was followed by an uproar. In an instant everyone in the camp was on the alert. Going out of my tent I found the country bathed in moonlight; with the aid of which we could dimly see the village from which the noise was coming. The thought of the headhunters at once leapt to our minds; but the shouting was too far away and confused for us to be able to make out anything definite from it. We called up to the Dansagu people, but they were too alarmed to leave their houses, and refused to come down and discuss the situation.

  Presently the shouting died down, and after a further wait, as nothing more occurred we turned in and went to sleep once more; though this time I must confess to some misgivings. In the morning a strong party from Dansagu went to enquire the cause of the disturbance, and found it to have been not headhunters, but the tigress which had come boldly into the village and carried off a young mithun right under the eyes of the villagers. Of the raiding party we heard no more, but I subsequently learnt from a trustworthy source that one really had come over the border after heads, but had thought better of the matter and turned back.

  Official duties called me down to the plains in the morning, and that year I had no more news of the tigress. The following year, however, I met the brother of the headman of Dansagu, who came for work as a khalasi, and from him I learnt that the tigress had soon afterwards met her fate. She too had fallen a victim to a spring gun.

  (1933)

  On the Banks of the Narbada

  By 'Nimrod'

  t is difficult in these days, when the mileage of the working railways in India amounts to 39,049, of which the Indian State Railways control 16,000, to realise the days prior to 1851 when the first section of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway was commenced from Bombay. Then the Narbada river, from the banks of which we write, was accessible only by weeks of travel, much of it through wild and difficult country. Now it is bridged by railways in four places.

  The portion of the river where we are is some twenty-five miles north of the G.I.P. Railway, which runs more or less parallel to the river between Khandwa and Jubbulpore.

  "Narbada Mai" or Mother Narbada, as it is reverently named by Hindus, is the most sacred of all the rive
rs of India. It rises to the East of the Central Provinces, on the borders of the State of Rewah, at a place called Amarkantak and enters the sea near the town of Broach after a course of some seven hundred miles.

  In former days it formed, with the forests and hills along its course, one of the main barriers which shut off the peoples of northern India from those of the Deccan. At the close of the triumphant career of Samudragupta, the second king of the Gupta dynasty, the Narbada river was his frontier to the South. He did not attempt to retain conquests made south of the river, and returned, about the year ad 330 past the fort of Asirgarh which is seen in these days by railway passengers from the carriage windows as they travel between the junctions of Bhusawal and Khandwa.

  The Narbada (Sanskrit Nar-mada "causing delight") is rightly named. It is a beautiful river through most of its course, and to camp on its banks in the cold weather season is truly a delight. In the hotter months of the year the pleasure may be somewhat at a discount, but the sport is more, both as to tiger and panther, and there is the fishing! In the cold weather there is no fishing with rod and line, and water being found in many places away from the river banks, the carnivora are also less easily located.

  However, there are always animals in the forests bordering the river, and a ramble along the banks the day after our arrival at camp showed us the old and new tracks of both tiger and panther.

  Our camp is pitched in the open, in the vicinity of shady trees beneath which the tents will be placed when the weather gets warmer. Some young buffaloes are procured at an average price of eight rupees, also a couple of goats at about the same rate, and we are ready for shikar. At this season of the year, it is not possible to beat these extensive and dense covers so any slaying of the carnivora has to be done from a machan, of which we have two. One is a full-sized newar (cotton webbing) bed of solid and non-creaky construction, and the other an ordinary dining room chair with the cane removed and newar substituted. This latter can be tied in almost any tree, thus giving a much wider choice as to position.

  We make a careful survey of all possible places at which to tie up our baits, and finally decide upon a large shady tamarind tree—some fifty yards from the river bank and alongside a path leading to it—for the big machan. This is about one and a half miles up stream. Less than a mile down stream a shady tree is chosen for the chair, and the place for the poor "boda" to await his blood-thirsty slaughterer is beside a driftwood tree sunk in the sand, a protruding branch affording an excellent hold for the unbreakable rope with which the animal is to be tethered.

  There is much-acquired experience in our arrangements. The machan must be well screened all round and from below. Even now, before we are sitting up, some screening is necessary. Nothing should be left to chance. There must be a rest for the rifle and a small peephole, separate from the aperture from which the shot is to be taken so that we can see the "kill" without having to make any movement. Other details include the fixing of nails into the tree trunk, or its branches, on which to hang our waterbottle and any other sundries at convenient places. To the small chair a comfortable rest for the feet is essential, and a small pillow has to be tied where it will allow the head to comfortably rest; for the vigil may be long or it may be short. We have to await the pleasure of our guest to his dinner and we must be in position, especially at this season of the year, by three o'clock in the afternoon.

  When all is ready at both the selected places, men are engaged at eight annas a day each—two for each buffalo as they won't go alone—to tie up the baits each evening and visit them each morning about an hour after sunrise. The animals require one's personal attention as to plenty of dry grass to lie upon at night and proper feeding and watering during the day. Also we have two spare animals so as to give each buffalo an alternate "night-in-bed". The moon will be at the full in seven days. This second quarter of the moon is the best—almost the only period— for this "sitting-up", so we hope the tiger or tigress will soon return this way.

  Our mind at rest as regards all our arrangements, we take walks abroad to learn our surroundings. We are close to a ferry plying backwards and forwards across the river. The ferry boat is run by a contractor who secures the necessary labour by subsidising the villages on either bank, the people arranging among themselves a "roster of duty". The ferry fees are moderate enough. A loaded cart is two annas, and if with bullocks, three annas. An anna is a consideration, so most of the bullocks have to wade and swim; and there is much shouting and yelling and throwing of stones to make the animals take to the water. A human passenger is taken across for the twelfth part of an anna.

  The people of the village on our side are mostly Dhimars— fishermen by caste and occupation but a good deal lower in the social scale than the Bois of the south who are, in most places, hereditary palanquin bearers. It seems likely that as servants— when Europeans first came to India—were largely recruited from the Bhois the term "boy", so much used, is derived from Bhoi. However this may be, these people are clean and industrious at their work of catching fish, which they sell in the surrounding villages at four annas a pound.

  There is much life in the river and along its sand banks and ' islands. We see a crocodile on yonder spit of sand, and nearby, perched on a branch of a submerged tree, is a "snake-bird" as the Indian Darter is called by Europeans and very snake-like he looks when his lean head and neck are protruded from the water. The specimen we see has his wings spread out to dry and looks rather like a church lectern. At a respectful distance from the seemingly sleeping crocodile are two Brahmini ducks—Ruddy Shelldrake to give them their proper name. Wary birds they are, and without good reason, as they are not sought after by European sportsmen and are protected by Hindus, who do not like them being shot. The graceful river terns are seen sweeping easily along over the water, and kingfishers of three varieties are noticed, the black and white kingfisher being less common than the two coloured ones.

  Cormorants we also see and that curious bird, the Goggle Eyed Plover, or stone-curlew, is constantly spied as we float silently in our dug-out among the islets of the river. Among the bright green foliage of the dwarf jamun bushes is heard the twittering of many small birds, bulbuls, warblers, sparrows, and the like. A racquet-tailed drongo scolds us as we drift by and we hear the screeching of green parroquets among the trees along the bank. There is the occasional splash of fish, and the wide ripple we see in front of us is caused by a crocodile having slipped silently into the stream.

  Indeed the river is a delight, not only on account of the many forms of life we see but on account of the lovely lights and shadows; the waving of the graceful tamarisks and grasses; and the beauty of the sunset which we watch until all the crimson glow has faded away. Then follows the paddling upstream in the moonlight until we arrive at the sandbank just below our camp.

  The camp larder is empty and we have to find the wherewithal to fill it, so the morning finds us early abroad with a view to rounding up some of the numerous pea-fowl in the vicinity. This proves an easy matter, and we do not mind firing an occasional shot in the vicinity of camp.

  In this way four days pass and then the buffalo downstream is killed by a male tiger. We see by the tracks that he was hunting among the reeds and bushes of the river bed; that he saw the buffalo and rapidly made towards it; that he swam across a small lagoon and then, stealing under the bank in the dark shade of some trees, quickly got within a few yards of his unsuspecting victim, the body of which is now covered with branches weighed down by stones. We have known a branch pulled aside by a prowling jackal to expose a limb to the ubiquitous crow, with the consequent arrival of vultures and the complete destruction of the "kill". We decide that three o'clock will be early enough to be in position, in which we are wrong, as it is while we are completing the screening arrangements that we hear the coughing of langoors announce that the tiger is on the move close by. The men hurriedly unscreen the carcass and make off up the bed of the river:

  The suspicions of the tiger have b
een aroused. He has heard movement at the place; and instead of appearing in daylight as he would probably have done, kept away until 10-30 p.m.

  The moon was well above the trees and the kill, in the shadow early in the evening, was now in the light, almost as broad as daylight, of a moon at the full. The stillness of the jungle at night can almost be felt. One could hear a pin drop. So when there is a slight rustle on the bank ten yards away, it is known who has arrived on the scene. After several minutes—we know his attitude of intent listening, watchfulness with all senses on the alert, we hear his heavy approach as he sets aside all caution and comes striding down the steep sandy incline to pass within about twelve feet of the muzzle of the rifle as he goes to the kill. He lifts the carcass with a quick movement, as is almost invariably the case on first arrival, finds it still hard and fast and stands, again listening intently, gazing out over the river bed.

  The rifle is raised, sighted, and lowered. There is plenty of time and such preliminary righting shots are a guard against undue haste. It is the first shot that is all important. The stillness of the peaceful night is rent by the tremendous explosion of seventy-five grains of cordite. The tiger lurches to one side, collapses, and slides to the foot of the slope shot through the heart and killed instantly by the terrific impact of the soft nose and split bullet of five hundred grains weight. One moment standing in all his majestic strength and symmetry, the next his life is extinguished, and his death even more merciful than that of the buffalo he slew a few hours before.

  To the sound of the signal horn we carry for such occasions, the men come up from the huts half a mile away. The mighty beast is seen, admired and carried up the bank—a difficult business and requiring a number of men as the tiger was nine feet long and weighed three hundred and eighty-four pounds.