It was interesting to study how they had manoeuvred, the leopard trying to reach cover without approaching the man, and the man to prevent that, without risking an encounter face to face. This lasted long. There was plenty of active patience on both sides; and strategy so admirable that I afterwards regretted that I did not make a plan of the ground and record it all. At length the leopard ventured a bound over a bush and the man came within reach of it sideways, and lifting high his “male bamboo,” he dealt his first smashing blow on the skull. Everything turned on that. To fail to stun the leopard would have been most dangerous. But he did not fail. He stunned it; and, with a shower of rapidly-repeated blows, he killed it, and not only saved his veal, but also earned the twenty rupees reward that is always payable for killing a leopard. Surely it never was better earned.
[138] ]I happened to be in charge of the office of the Deputy Commissioner at Thayetmyo, when he came for his reward, and held the inquiry myself. I noted the details carefully, because friends in the station, one of them a veteran who had been a quarter of a century in India, had nothing to tell to equal it; and, in the twenty-three years that have passed since then, during which I have heard on the average more than one leopard anecdote a month, I have never been able to verify anything so good as this.
XIX [139]
THE UNFINISHED SPEECH AND DANCE
In fairness to the eloquent hero of this adventure it should be told, lest any reader does not know it, that wounded leopards are as dangerous as wounded lions or tigers. There was one that was clumsily handled by villagers in Burma a few years ago, and six men died out of those it injured; and I know a man who has told me, with a shudder, that he has twice seen a clever hunter at his side killed by a wounded leopard “charging home.”
It was early in 1888, and on the plains near the mouth of the Sittang river in Burma, that I was one of about twenty men with rifles who gathered round a big and leafy tree, in which a mortally-wounded leopard had taken refuge. None could see him; and, when his growl was hushed, we could not even guess his whereabouts. It grew tedious standing there, like waiting for a train that is late. Many men fired at moving twigs, on the chance that he might be below them. “He ought [140] ]to be in bits by this time,” said one at last, “and falling down in detachments.” But nothing fell, not even a drop of blood. It became more and more difficult to keep the villagers surging around at a safe distance.
Then out stepped a brave sepoy, and, heedless of the dissuasive shouts of his companions, he prepared to climb the tree. I shouted “stop”; and he grew eloquent, not in the style of Bengal, but in the best Indian manner, heated sincerely by seeing himself balked of a chance of distinction.
“What is the danger to me? Am I afraid of anything? Let cannon and rifles thunder and rattle, I will walk into myriads of them if I am bidden. What is a leopard to the like of that?
“I want to show what I can do. I will show I cannot be afraid. O, let me go! Do not bid me stop! What is a little leopard? I could take a tiger by the paw!
“It is a duty to slay that leopard, a duty to face and kill him, a duty to the people, a duty to the Sarkar.” ...
Here note two things. First, see the innate instinct of obedience, illustrated by the reference to the Sarkar or Government. Fancy any European talking of it in such a connection without derision. Among our very soldiers it would [141] ]raise a laugh. Well indeed do the Indians say, as they are now doing, that it is Europe that leads and pin-pricks them into anarchy. The other thing to note is the fine oratorical tact of the speaker, worthy of Demosthenes. There was not the faintest allusion to what we all knew, that the leopard was sure to be dead presently. This did not make it less dangerous to close with him, but only made it quite needless. The speech ran on: