That night, when dining with the Ainslies, our host told us of some curious happenings in tiger hunts around Alipur Duar. A former commandant was shooting one day on Dundora. Mrs Ainslie was in the howdah with him. A tiger burst out of the jungle before the beat. The officer fired and wounded it; but, hardly checking in its rush, it dashed forward, being missed by another bullet, and sprang on to the elephant's head. For a second it stood with its hind feet on Dundora's skull, its forepaws on the front rail of the howdah. The officer dropped his empty rifle and, seizing a second gun, shoved the muzzle against the tiger's chest and fired. The brute fell back off the elephant, dead. The whole incident had passed like a flash. The tiger had actually stood right over the mahout crouching on the neck; but the man, although he found afterwards a long tear in the shoulder of his coat from the animal's claw, was not touched. On another occasion a tiger was shot in mid air as it sprang clean across a nullah, crumpled up and fell into the stream at the bottom. When the sportsmen on their elephants reached the edge of the bank, it was nowhere to be seen; and they concluded that it must have escaped down the nullah. But a month afterwards a second tiger was similarly shot in the middle of a spring and was seen from a distance to fall into a stream in the nullah, try to struggle out of the water and collapse beneath the surface. So the mystery of the first one's disappearance was solved. It must have been lying under water at the bottom of the nullah; but no one thought of looking for it there.
Next morning I came out on to the veranda of the dâk bungalow and surveyed with pride the six elephants drawn up in line before me. On the neck of each sat the mahout, who raised his hand to his forehead in a salaam. Then at the word of command the six trunks were lifted into the air and the elephants trumpeted in salute. As I looked at them I murmured inwardly: "This day a tiger must die!"
We were to look for the animal that had killed the cow I had found the previous morning. So Burrard and I made an early start and proceeded to the spot I had marked. The nullah was narrow, S-shaped, with almost perpendicular banks fifteen feet high. A stream of water filled it from bank to bank. On either side of it was thick scrub jungle and elephant grass eight feet high. I stationed Burrard at one end of the S and took up my position at the other about a hundred yards from him. My elephant was back a little from the nullah, along the far bank of which the tall, stiff grass stood like a wall. The beaters started a quarter of a mile from us and drove through the scrub on the other side of the nullah. A tiger, as a rule, begins to move at the first sound of the beat; so I stood up in my howdah with my rifle cocked. I may mention that shooting from an elephant, even when it is standing, is not easy, for the animal is never still. It continually shifts its weight from foot to foot, flaps its ears, moves its head and beats its sides or chest with its trunk to drive off the flies.
The line of beaters advanced through the scrub with their usual din. Now and then, under the tangled undergrowth, I caught a glimpse of my orderly or a mahout. They drew nearer and nothing broke out of the jungle in front of them. My heart sank when I saw them not a hundred yards from me. But at that moment a number of small birds flew up from the tall grass and I heard the sound of some heavy animal forcing its way through the tough stems. I held my rifle ready to cover the spot. The next instant I saw the head and shoulders of a large tiger push out through the grass on the very brink of the nullah. Though the tall stalks on my side almost concealed my elephant, the tiger saw me at once and crouched for a spring. Its savage face was plainly visible, the fierce eyes fastened on me, the snarling lips drawn back over the white fangs, the bristling whiskers, all forming a fiendish mask appalling in its cruel expression. I threw up the rifle to my shoulder, took a quick aim and fired. The tiger started convulsively, sprang erect for an instant, then plunged head foremost into the nullah with stiffened forelegs close to the body, as a man diving holds his arms straight by his sides and hurls himself into the water. I was too far back from the bank to see down to the bottom of the nullah; but suddenly the tiger sprang convulsively straight into my view and then fell back again. The mahout, shrouded by the high grass, had seen nothing of all this. I shouted at him to urge Dundora forward to the edge of the nullah. From the brink I peered down into it; but, to my intense disappointment, no prostrate body of a tiger met my eyes. The banks were sheer; and I could look up and down the nullah for a hundred yards. I could not believe that the brute had escaped. I was convinced that I had not missed him, that my bullet had struck where I aimed, right between the shoulders, as he crouched for the spring. It should have been a fatal shot; but the tiger had vanished.
Suddenly Ainslie's stories of the previous night recurred to me. I glanced down the stream and saw, twenty yards from where we stood, a discoloured patch in the dark water. I had the elephant brought opposite it. I stared hard until I believed that I could make out the outlines of a tiger below the surface and see the stripes on the body. I pointed it out to the mahout. He gazed unbelievingly for a moment, then gave vent to an excited shout. The beaters had meantime reached the opposite bank and were calling across to ask if I had hit the tiger. When we told them where it was they laughed incredulously. I ordered Bechan to dismount from Khartoum's neck and enter the stream. With the air of one who does a ridiculous thing to please a fretful child, he slid down the bank and walked into the water. Suddenly he yelled in terror and sprang for the dry land. He had put his bare foot on the tiger's body. The animal was lying dead in three feet of water. The others urged Bechan to go in again; and with some trepidation he did so. Reaching down he lifted up the tail and held the tip up above the surface. The other mahouts and my orderly shouted with joy, for it meant largesse to them, and jumped in after Bechan. They moved the body easily to the edge of the water but could not lift it up the bank. We called some coolies from huts close by; and it took twenty men to raise the carcass up to the level.
THE TIGER'S LYING IN STATE.
