We stopped at a rest-house about three miles from the village, and I sent the boy on ahead to buy food for us and to get information about the tigers. Then we engaged one of the local natives to act as guide and guard. I was exhausted by the trip and soon after supper I went to sleep.
A few hours after dark, I was awakened by the most unearthly yell I have ever heard. I jumped up and called the boy I had brought from Calcutta. He was trembling with fright and he said that he didn't know what the noise meant. Remembering all the tales I had heard about the people of this district, I ordered the boy to bar the doors and windows and to lay out my guns. I was well armed with automatics and revolvers and I prepared for a battle. Presently there came another yell, answered on all sides of us. With my guns loaded and ready, I sat there waiting. Every few minutes the yell was repeated, and it seemed to be getting closer and closer. At last, however, in spite of it, I fell asleep, exhausted.
I was awakened in the morning by the cook bringing my breakfast and the jingling of the ankle bells of a mail-runner, who was passing the house on his fifteen-mile run. After I had finished eating, the cook returned with the native who had been hired to guard us. The native salaamed and spoke to the boy, who acted as interpreter.
"What is he saying?" I asked the boy.
"He says that he is the head watchman and he wants to know if you slept well with him watching over you." The yells that had kept me up most of the night were the "All's well" of the watchmen. Much to the amazement of the cook and the guard who had come to inquire after my night's rest, I burst out laughing. I laughed so hard that I sat down on the floor and put my head against my knees—I howled.
The guard was given a few rupees and told to keep his watchmen farther away from the house the next night. To this day, when I think of myself sitting up all night, dead tired and fighting off mosquitoes, while my guards became imaginary thieves about to attack me, I laugh.
The headman of the village arrived with several natives and I went with them to inspect the tigers—two beautifully marked animals. I closed the bargain immediately and made arrangements to recage the tigers and haul them by ox-teams to Calcutta.
At Perth the directors of the New Gardens were so pleased with the tigers that they sent me a good bonus for my trouble in securing them. And my story about the thieves of Hazaribagh was the joke of the year.
There came a dearth of good animals at Singapore, and so I determined to go into the state of Trengganu to see what luck I should have at collecting. Trengganu was at that time an independent state and had never been thoroughly explored. The Sultan who ruled over it was unwilling to have white men in the country because he feared that his state might become a protectorate of one of the larger powers. He was wise enough to realize that if a white man entered and committed some such indiscretion as interfering with one of the native women, the white man would be found with a kris stuck into him. And the result would probably be that the white man's government would send soldiers to depose the Sultan and take over the government. He wanted nothing more than to be left alone with his country, and so he made it a law that foreigners were not allowed.
At Singapore one heard many tales of the wealth of animals in Trengganu, but it was generally conceded that it was impossible for a white man to enter the country. For my part, though I had no idea how to win the Sultan to my way of thinking, I decided that it would be at least as easy as getting a permit to go into Lower Siam. That would have required interviewing H. H. Prince Damerong, brother of the King of Siam and Minister of the Interior, which was no easy matter for so obscure a person as I.