They washed the badly-bitten arm with whisky, having no medicaments of any kind. It would have been strange if they had had any, for men are so seldom hurt in tiger-shooting that nobody anticipates injury. They had nothing but whisky. So they poured it on, and “it nipped,” at any-rate, which was, somehow, a comfort.

When the wounded man beheld himself in the looking-glass in the morning, he saw that his hair had suddenly grown grey in that one night. The third man, it is said, was delirious, with shame [9] ]and remorse, because he had faltered. Meanwhile the tiger, growing stiff, lay dead on the veranda, just outside the door of the room, with a gaping wound in its side, like Thorwaldsen’s lion at Lucerne.

When Major Shaw saw the injured man he had quite recovered. There was a scar on the arm, and a stiffness in two of the fingers, nothing else; but “for the rest of my life I could smell a tiger at fifty yards,” said he. “I’ll never forget the smell that went through me as he breathed upon me—never, as long as I live.”

II [10]
THE WONDERFUL ESCAPE OF “TIGER-HILL”

I am sorry to say it is more than twenty years since I began to listen to stories of tigers and leopards in Burma; and even more since I first made acquaintance with the beasts myself. I do not expect to see any more now, except in a Zoo. So perhaps it is time to note what has been learned, to re-tell the best of what I have heard, and in short do for others what others in days gone by have done for me. I have always considered that the man who keeps a good story fresh is the greatest of public benefactors.

What made me think of this in connection with cats was the recent discovery of the truth of a story, which I have heard many times without believing it. It was first told to me in 1891 by Burmans in the locality where it happened. Then, and as often afterwards as it was told, I questioned the speaker about how he knew, and never was quite satisfied. Even the version of [11] ]it in Colonel Pollok’s Wild Sports of Burma and Assam (p. 65 of the 1900 edition), read like hearsay and seemed unconvincing. At last, in 1908, Colonel Dobbs told it to me in Coonoor, and when he was questioned he was able to delight me with the news that he had seen the thing. So here it is.

The time was 1859. The scene was the forest-covered hilly ground about seventy miles north of Maulmain, in what is now Bilin township of Thaton district, Burma, between the Sittang and Salween rivers. A detachment of the 32nd Madras Native Infantry, under Captain Manley, was marching on business there, going in single file along a footpath, preceded by the civil officer with them, a Mr Charles Hill.

Hill was a big man, “over six feet and of great strength,” and strode ahead with a big stick in his hand, while two orderlies or servants followed at a careless distance behind him, with his weapons. This Chinese way of making war or hunting is almost a custom in Burma among Europeans; and a very natural custom too, in a hot, moist climate.

Suddenly Hill came upon a tiger lying full length on the footpath, apparently asleep. He looked round and called for his gun. It was for the moment out of reach.

[12] ]Perhaps it may be worth while to try to make the ordinary stay-at-home Englishman, who does not know how lucky he is to be able to stay at home, and knows a great deal less than he supposes, realise how and why the sensations of Mr Hill were different from what his own would have been. The first point is that Hill knew what a Londoner would never suspect, that there was no particular cause to be afraid. If afraid, he had only to go back a few yards, and shout, and bang the trees with his stick. The monstrous cat would take the hint and silently slip away. Not even a tiger in the prime of life would seek a fight. He feels, what politicians are only beginning to realise in another sphere, that fighting is bad business.