“A tiger having taken refuge in our hill, I was anxious to beat him up; the sepoys being eager to join me I told the men the hunt was quite optional, and that the volunteer party might take as many muskets as they pleased. We started at 1 P.M., and soon fell in with his immense footprints, taking the direction of the untenanted and jungly hill. A curious sort of feeling is suggested by following traces of this kind, that are to abut you know not how soon upon the grim precursor; going on is like being caught in the rapid leading to a cataract. We were stationed at the old post of vantage on the rocks, the sepoys began beating from the opposite part of the hill; a man in a tree communicated that the tiger was roused, and our expectation of his coming towards us was for a time intense. Keeping to the jungle of the hill above the pathway, he turned back in the direction from which we had come, and avoided the line of beaters. We quitted the rocks, and placed ourselves in the pathway beyond the part of the jungle the tiger had taken to, and the beating by the men bringing round the left of the line recommenced towards us. Scarcely a minute seemed to have elapsed before we heard an ugh-ugh from the tiger, though we were in ignorance at the time it was the roar with which he accompanied his spring on one of the sepoys, for at that time we got no sight of the tiger; but the news of a man being knocked down soon reached us, and a sepoy carried him down upon his back; a few scratches were visible on the shoulders, but the extent of the principal injury, which was on the head, was concealed by the turban, almost completely stained with blood.
“I heard afterwards that he was a-head of the others, crouching down, and looking into the jungle grass on the top of the hill, at the edge of the tree jungle, for traces of the tiger, when the animal sprung on him from behind, lighting with his fore-paws on his shoulders; and that the wounds inflicted on the scalp were from a bite, the teeth luckily slipping over the surface of the skull. Mr. M⸺ and I took a more advantageous position on the slope of the rising ground, facing the conical hill, and at about sixty yards from the place where we afterwards saw the tiger emerge. An havaldar put himself at the head of those men who had brought guns, and continued the hunt, much incensed against the tiger; he at length exposed his whole flank at about sixty yards to Mr. M⸺ and myself. Mr. M⸺ fired a little before me, and striking the tiger, caused him to turn round and escape the heavier bullet from my gun. The havaldar shortly after shot him again a little in front of the hip; Mr. M⸺’s shot was behind the shoulder. We left the tiger for that day; the next evening we beat the whole hill, but he was not to be found; probably he was dead, for an unusual collection of crows, vultures, and adjutants perching or flying very low, seemed to give token of his death. The wounded sepoy is doing very well; and the present of some rupees has made him consider himself a lucky fellow.”
THE BĀGHMARS.
The following extract must not be omitted, since it elucidates the sketch of “[The Spring-bow],” [vol. ii. p. 73].
“I must tell you of a tiger that Lieutenant M⸺ and I went out to kill, and only succeeded in wounding. Some days ago, a cow was killed on this our hill of Goalpara, and tigers’ footprints were in beautiful freshness and preservation on the footpath around that remote conical hill that has been before mentioned. Captain Davidson’s assistant got two elephants for beating the jungle, and with a number of sepoys with muskets, I went out again, and did what was most prudent, by remaining on some rocks to receive the tiger when he should clear the jungle, and be driven towards me. The jungle was beat, but no tiger appeared, and the sepoys, getting tired of waiting, went into the jungle to beat instead of the elephants; as this was really dangerous I advised them against it, but uselessly; they seemed quite unconcerned, and to think it an affair of luck. I told the little havaldar, who is a leader on these occasions, that the tiger would kill him; he said, ‘Yes, he would if I were to let him;’ and this was not the least the bravado it would have been in the mouth of an European, but the man’s plain meaning. It is his opinion of the tiger that he is a beast possessed of great hikmat, cunning, but little heart or liver; and if you oppose him resolutely, like the devil he will flee from you. The beaters went cutting down the jungle and shouting; and, to put you out of suspense, no tiger was found, though the edges of his footprints were still fresh and crumbling.
“The enterprize of bringing in the tiger was resigned to some bhagmar people, professional tiger-killers, a party of whom happened to be in Goalpara, for the purpose of receiving payment for heads they had collected.
“Have you ever seen the bow they set for tigers[20]? It is laid on one side the animal’s track, and is of stronger and rather larger proportions than a bahangī bamboo; the joint force of two or three men draws the string back when the arrow is to be set; the poisoned head of the arrow, which is carried separate, is fitted on, and a piece of very thin twine laid from the bow across the animal’s path; the least touch on this string discharges the arrow in the same line with deadly precision. This bow was laid the night after our battue, and the next morning, about 9 A.M., I got the news that the tiger was lying dead upon the hill-side, and a number of prisoners were about to carry it to Captain Davidson’s; from him it was brought to me. It was a fine female, killed with its dinner of cow, and without any wound but that which killed it;—good proof that it was not the tiger we saw, who was twice wounded, as was shown by heavy clots of blood fallen on leaves over which he retreated. The arrow had buried itself only to the depth of its head, just behind the left shoulder: the mere wound could not have caused death, but the poison did; and the tiger was found about sixty yards from the spot where it came in contact with the string. The poison is the same in appearance as that on the arrow you got at Rajmahal; the tiger-killers told me they got it from the inhabitants of Bhotan, but whether these last make or retail it I do not know: its efficacy is tremendous.
“I have observed, and the same remark must have occurred to you, that these Sebundies, and natives generally who live in the constant vicinity of wild beasts, show a fearlessness of them that puts to shame the courage of an European on the same point. To beat through thick jungle, containing a tiger that had just struck down one of their party, some with only sticks in their hands, is what no European will do excepting on compulsion.
“I put the question to my havaldar, a man capable of answering it from personal courage and experience in such matters, whether the buffalo charges blindly forward in his first direction, so as to allow of a person’s escaping by stepping aside? ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘the buffalo will turn with you.’