Once during the rainy season at Asirgarh I was sitting up over the carcass of a white cow in what should have been brilliant moonlight. But heavy clouds gathered; and soon all I could see of the kill was a faint whitish glimmer. Suddenly this was blotted out, and I heard a crunching of bones and tearing of flesh. I could not see my sights, but I fired in the direction of the sounds. A terrific howl followed by fiendish shrieks and groans told me that I had hit a tiger. I heard him rush off thirty or forty yards and throw himself on the ground, where he rolled in agony, tearing up the earth and sending the stones rattling down into a small nullah beside which he lay. I hoped that I was listening to his dying moans; but he got up again and the groaning and snarling died away in the distance. There was a village a mile off; so, giving the tiger time to get well away, I climbed down and made for it. It was a nerve-trying walk in the darkness; for I feared every moment to stumble on the wounded beast. However I reached shelter without encountering him. I gave my shikaree instructions to bid the cowherds of the village be ready with their buffaloes at daybreak to track the tiger. For these great black beasts are frequently used in this work. Their instinct tells them that the tiger is the enemy of their race; and they regard him with savage hatred. In a herd they do not fear him; for the hungriest cattle thief will not dare to attack a number of them which form round the calves and present to him an impenetrable front of lowered heads and sharp horns. On their backs the small children of the village who drive them to and from the grazing ground are safe. When a sportsman employs them to track a wounded tiger, the herds take them to a point where they can scent his trail. As soon as they have smelt it, they paw up the earth and bellow with rage, then dash off in pursuit. If they come on him lying up wounded and sore under a tree, they will charge him if allowed to. And no tiger would dare to face their savage onslaught; for little avails his strength and cunning against the fierce rush of the infuriated beasts. If he is not too badly hurt, he will invariably fly before their attack. If not, then must the sportsman shoot quick and the herds exert all their authority to keep the buffaloes back; for, if left to themselves, they will rush in on the tiger, gore him and stamp him to death under their hoofs. And the skin will be of little use as a trophy when they are allowed to work their will on the battered carcass.
Having given my orders, I slept in the local police station on a charpoy lent me by the havildar, or sergeant, in charge. At daylight my shikaree woke me and I went out to find about twenty buffaloes collected. They were driven out to the kill. The sight of the dead cow enraged them. They bellowed and stamped, then snuffing up the trail set off at a run across the fields like a pack of hounds. They soon tracked the tiger into the jungle. They crashed through the undergrowth, now and then at fault, but questing round until they picked up the trail again. They followed it up for two or three miles and finally lost it in broken and precipitous ground among the low hills. My shikaree assured me that it was useless to search further, as the tiger could not have been badly wounded and was certain to have retreated to a great distance. To my regret I let myself be persuaded; for, a few days after, the sight of vultures gathering from all quarters led to the discovery of the tiger's body not half a mile from where we had left off. But the carcass was putrid and half-eaten, so the skin was useless.
But shooting on chance in the dark is not always productive of the desired result. Once when sitting up on a cloudy night for a panther, I discharged my rifle at some animal which I could hear, but could not see, at the kill. A pandemonium of shrieks and yells told me that by good luck my bullet had gone home. I waited for silence, and then, having reloaded, climbed down and cautiously approached. But to my disappointment, instead of the dead panther which I had hoped to find, there lay the corpse of a loathsome hyena. On another occasion when sitting up in the middle of a village for a daring leopard which used to enter it at night and kill the cattle in their pens, I shot a mangy pariah dog in the dark.
A panther is a much bolder animal than a tiger. He generally returns to his kill earlier, often in broad daylight. I have seen one come out, five minutes after my coolies had left, from some bushes in which he had evidently been watching them. Even when shot at and missed or slightly wounded they will return the same night to a kill. And sometimes one has been known to discover the waiting sportsman in the machân first and spring up the tree to attack him unprovoked. So that sitting up for these animals is not without its risks.
The method of shooting tiger from elephants undoubtedly gives the best sport. Seventeen miles from Buxa Fort the great forest ends abruptly. From its ragged edge, five miles above the town of Alipur Duar, the cultivated plains stretch away to the south, seamed with nullahs which run from inside the jungle through the open fields. They are generally deep and filled with low trees and scrub, and as they contain water form ideal bases of operation for a tiger issuing from the forest to carry on war against herds of cattle in the villages. The striped thief can lie up within a few hundred yards of a farm and kill the cows when they come to drink. If disturbed, he can retreat up the nullah to the shelter of the forest. Consequently the stretch of ground just outside the south border of the Terai Jungle is full of tigers.
During a visit from our Colonel to Buxa for his annual inspection I received an invitation from Mr Ainslie, the Subdivisional Officer of Alipur Duar, to bring my elephants and join him in a beat for a cattle thief which was lying up in a nullah three or four miles from the town. At that time I had only Khartoum and Dundora; as Jhansi had run away to the forest after being attacked by a wild elephant and had been missing for months. However, on our arrival, we found Ainslie had collected seven; so that we had nine altogether. This number was not a great one; but we hoped that it would suffice. Mrs Ainslie was to accompany us; for she was a great sportswoman and had shot five tigers herself, as well as various panthers, bears and bison. We started out in the early morning, crossed the railway line, forded a river—which each elephant carefully sounded with its trunk—and reached the nullah in which the tiger was reported to be lurking. It was broad and dry, filled with scrub and low trees. Ainslie took the Colonel in his howdah; and Mrs Ainslie shared mine. Taking up our positions on the bank we sent the beater elephants half a mile further on to drive towards us. At a signal from Ainslie the beat began. The elephants formed line across the nullah and advanced, forcing their way through the jungle. An occasional squeal from one of them when the mahout struck it on the head for shirking a particularly thorny bit of scrub, the cries of the men and the crashing of the huge beasts through the jungle as they trampled down the undergrowth and broke off branches from the trees, made din enough to scare anything. It soon proved too much for the tiger's nerves. My mahout had carelessly allowed his elephant to draw back from the edge of the steep bank. I saw a sudden flash of yellow as the tiger darted through the scrub along under the overhanging brink in such a way that he was sheltered from my rifle. But I shouted a warning to the others, who were posted farther down where the bank sloped less steeply. The Colonel fired and wounded the beast, which dashed up the bank and received a bullet from Ainslie before it was lost to sight in the high grass on the level. The beater elephants emerged from the nullah, surrounded it, and drove it in again. They endeavoured to send it to us; but the tiger refused to face the guns a second time and broke through their line, my orderly, Draj Khan, hurling a heavy stick at it and hitting it as it flashed past his elephant. We tried for it again lower down, several times, but without success.
While we were thus engaged it seemed strange to see the mail train pass on the railway line not half a mile from us, driver, guard, and passengers leaning out to look at us. Leaving the nullah we ranged through the long grass on the level and put up a number of wild pigs, the Colonel shooting a fine old boar with long tusks as sharp as knives.
Having heard that a panther was supposed to be lying up in another nullah a couple of miles away, we took our elephants there and tried a beat for it. This time the howdah bearers advanced along the bank in line with the beaters, spaced across the nullah, which was fairly open, with patches of scrub here and there in it. We were unsuccessful in finding the panther but were afforded an excellent example of the terror with which elephants regard tiny, harmless animals. Over some bushes in front of me I caught a glimpse of a hare running through them down into the nullah. Its course brought it right across the line of beaters. Then these huge beasts, which had just faced a wounded tiger unmoved, went mad at the sight of it. All trumpeted shrilly, some planted their forefeet firmly and refused to advance, others turned and stampeded, despite the heavy blows showered on them with the iron ankus by the enraged mahouts. I saw Ainslie and the Colonel, unable to discover the cause of the disturbance, stand up in their howdah, clutching their rifles and looking everywhere for the charging panther, which they imagined must have scared the elephants.
One afternoon in Buxa I received a telegram from Ainslie telling me to be with him early next morning as a tiger had killed in his neighbourhood that day. As Alipur Duar was twenty-two miles away it behoved me to start at once and march through the night. So, filling my Thermos flask and putting a loaf of bread and a tin of preserved meat into my haversack, I shouldered my rifle and walked down the three miles of steep road to Santrabari. Here I found the mahouts and ordered them to get the two elephants ready, Jhansi still being a deserter. I bade them put the howdah on Dundora's back, as she was the steadier with a charging tiger. We started off at once; but before we reached the railway station at Buxa Road, darkness had fallen. My elephant stepped out briskly with the swaying stride that is particularly trying in a howdah, the occupant of which is shaken about like a pea on a drum. I kept slipping off the hard wooden seat; so I tried standing up, holding on to the front rail. This was almost worse; for if I forgot for a moment to brace myself up with stiffened arms I was thrown against the side. So for twenty-two miles I had to keep changing my position continually and found it tiring work. Through the forest we lumbered on without stopping. The night was dark. Fortunately, the road ran along beside the railway line clear of the trees, which would otherwise have swept the howdah off Dundora's back. Once or twice a wild elephant trumpeted in the jungle, much to the alarm of our tame ones; so I kept my rifle loaded, ready to drive off any we might meet. When I felt hungry I opened the tin of meat and, as we went along, made a frugal dinner, having to use my fingers as knife and fork, washing the food down with water from my flask. The long march was extremely fatiguing; but by daylight we were clear of the forest. Arrived at the dâk bungalow at Alipur Duar I found one of the officers of my regiment, Major Burrard, who had come there on leave from headquarters at Dibrugarh in Assam for a shoot. The Ainslies could not accompany us that day, but had kindly lent us their four elephants. The kill was reported to be in a nullah about four miles away, close to the edge of the forest. Burrard and I started for it at once. Our way lay over open bare fields. Our elephants, as is their habit, persisted in tailing off in single file, though a hundred could have marched abreast. Each kept exactly in the footprints of the one in front of it. As we went along, I noticed half a mile to our left a nullah fringed with trees. In these, or circling overhead, were a number of vultures. I remarked that every now and then one would swoop down to the ground, only to rise again into the air like a rocketting pheasant without alighting. They indicated the presence of a dead animal; and I asked the mahouts if our kill was there. They answered that it was about a mile further on. I judged that another cow must have been killed in this nullah; and from the fact that the vultures did not dare to settle on it, I concluded that a tiger must be in the immediate vicinity. So I directed my elephant towards the spot. As we drew near I looked at the rows of bald-headed vultures, those repulsive-looking scavengers of India, sitting on the branches. Every few minutes one would fly down towards the ground and, without settling, hurriedly shoot up again into the air. Cautiously approaching the edge of the bank we found, as I expected, the carcass of a cow. We skirted the bank but could not see the tiger, which was probably asleep somewhere in the tangled scrub in the bottom of the nullah. So, marking the spot for a visit next day, we went on our way. Arrived at the place where the beat was to begin, we found another nullah filled with jungle, with bare, open ground stretching away on either side of it. We took up our positions in it on our two howdah elephants and put the beaters in farther down.
They came on the tiger lying asleep under a tree. He sprang up in alarm and, instead of retreating along the nullah towards us, rushed up the bank and broke away over the open past a group of natives who had come out from a farm close by to watch the hunt. As he was not fifty yards from them, they were very scared. It must have been a fine sight to see the big cat bounding across the bare plain until he reached and plunged into a parallel nullah a few hundred yards away. But we in the bottom of our ravine saw or heard nothing of him until our beaters came up. We searched the other nullah for him in vain. He probably had not stopped until he had reached the shelter of the forest.