The Wonders of the Jungle, Book One

by Sarath Kumar Ghosh

"Charge, brothers, charge!" he cried to the buffaloes.

Then his big brothers, the buffaloes, charged with thundering hoofs and fiery nostrils. The tiger gave a huge leap to the side to get away; but the buffaloes on that side opened out and headed off the tiger. On to the front again the tiger was forced to turn—and run for his life before the furious herd.

The buffaloes chased and chased that tiger, across field and jungle, over hedges and ditches, through brambles and bushes and thickets, till at last the tiger jumped across a ravine and ran away growling and howling and snarling, like a low thief who is chased out of a village at night.

The ravine was a deep hollow in the ground, like a huge ditch; and it ran all the way across the ground; so the buffaloes could not get over it, as they cannot jump as far as a tiger. Then the buffaloes returned to the village, and Gulab gave the news about the tiger.

Some of the village people ran to the palace, and said that the tiger might be still hiding somewhere on the other side of the ravine. So the six Englishmen went around to that side to hunt the tiger. They found him and wounded him four or five times. But it takes a lot more than that to kill a tiger. The tiger ran out, got past the hunters, and came back again across the ravine. Here he hid in a dense thicket, and would not come out and be hunted to please anybody.

Now, when a tiger is hiding in a thicket and will not come out and be hunted, there is only one way to make him come out.

What is that way? Can you tell?

Why, of course, the bull buffaloes!

So the herdsman brought up the thirty bull buffaloes, and drew them up in a long line in front of the thicket. And on the other side of the thicket the six Englishmen got up into trees, and pointed their guns at the thicket.

Then the herdsman ordered the buffaloes to charge, and they charged right through the thicket, trampling it down and cutting it up into lanes; so the tiger had to run out on the other side. But on that side the six Englishmen were waiting for him; and they all fired at the tiger at once, and all hit him. They used a kind of bullet that broke up into a hundred pieces right inside the tiger.