XXIV
TIGERS AND CROCODILES

WHEN I first came, a visitor, to the Malay Peninsula, I was struck by the fact that wherever I went I heard stories of tigers. If, in the course of a day’s ride, I stopped at a village to eat my luncheon, the people who pressed round to watch me and have a chat would always tell me a tiger story of local and comparatively recent occurrence. Wherever I encamped for the night, I should be sure of at least one tale of successful attack or successful resistance, where a tiger had filled the principal rôle. When once I understood the little peculiarity, I took it as a matter of course, and at talking time I used to say, “Now tell me about the tiger: what was it he did?” It may have been accident, but it is no exaggeration to say that my question nearly always drew forth a more or less ghastly story.

Now that my visit is nearly over, it occurs to me that, though I have accumulated an almost endless series of more or less interesting tales of the “low, crouching horror with the cruel fangs,” I have not retailed any of them to you. In a certain number of cases I was myself near enough to be able to verify details, and in others I had means of proving main facts. One is almost bound to say that, because tiger-stories, which are worth repeating, are almost always listened to with incredulity, or, what is worse, with that banter which often means, in plain words, “What I have not seen myself I decline to believe.” That is the attitude of England to the Orient in the presence of a tiger-story with which the auditors can claim no connection. I said that the prevalence of these tales struck me on my first arrival. I soon became blasé, and for a long time I have had no curiosity on the subject; but I will tell you of two tiger incidents that I personally verified, as far as I was able, and I will make no attempt to paint in the background with local colour, in order to supply you with finished pictures.

There is an island by the western shore of the Straits of Malacca. You would never guess it to be an island, for it is simply a block of mangrove-covered mud, with one side towards the sea, and the other three sides separated from the mainland by deep but narrow lagoons of tidal water. The only inhabitants are a few wood-cutters, Malays and Chinese, who live in huts of mat or bark with palm-leaf roofs, while they are employed cutting mangroves and a hard-wood palm called Nîbong. The huts of the Chinese are on the ground, but the Malay dwellings are invariably raised a few feet above the damp soil, and to them entry is obtained by means of a ladder. These hovels are very carelessly built; they are of flimsy materials, only intended to last for a few months, when they are abandoned and rapidly fall to pieces. They serve their purpose. The occupants are out from dawn till afternoon, when they return to cook, eat, and sleep; and so, from day to day, till the job on which they are engaged is completed, and they can return, in the case of the Malays, to their families, while the Chinese are probably moved to another scene of similar labour.

I was obliged to tell you this; you would not understand the story otherwise.

The island covers an area of several thousand acres, but except for the few wood-cutters it was, at the time I write of, uninhabited. At one spot there was a hut containing two Chinese, near it a Malay house with eight or ten men in it, and at no great distance a large shed with nearly a score of Chinese. One dark night, about 11 P.M., the two Chinese who lived together were awakened by a noise in that part of the hut where they kept their food. One of the two got up, struck a light, and went into the back room. Immediately there was a dull thud, as of a man knocked heavily down, and the poor wretch screamed, “Help me, it is a tiger!” His comrade at once got out of his mosquito-curtain, and sprang to his friend’s assistance. Seizing him by the arm, he tried to free him from the clutches of the tiger, who already had a firm hold of the doomed man’s leg. The tug of life and death did not last long, for the tiger pulled the would-be rescuer down on his face, and, the light having been extinguished in the struggle, the man’s courage went out with it, and, in a paroxysm of fear, he climbed on to the roof. There he remained till daylight, while, close beneath him, within the narrow limits of the hut, the tiger dragged his victim hither and thither, snarling and growling, tearing the flesh and crunching the bones of the man, whose agonies were mercifully hidden. In the grey light which heralds dawn, the watcher, clinging to the roof-ridge, saw the tiger drag out of the house and into the forest the shapeless remains of his late companion. When once the sun was fairly up, the survivor slid down, and without daring to look inside the hut, made his way to the nearest Police Station, and reported what had occurred. An examination of the premises fully bore out his statement.

A week passed. The Malays, whose hut was nearest to that visited by the tiger, were careful to bar their door after hearing what had happened; but in this case the precaution proved useless. Easterns, especially those engaged in severe manual labour, sleep exceedingly heavily, and the men of this household were aroused by a smothered cry from one of their number; the noise of a heavy body falling through the thatch having passed practically unnoticed. One of the party got up, lighted a torch, and was at once knocked down by a tiger springing upon him. In a moment every man had seized his heavy chopping-knife, and the whole party fell upon the man-eater, and, by the light of the fallen torch, hit so hard and straight that the beast suddenly sprang through the roof and disappeared. It was then, for the first time, discovered that this was the means by which the tiger had effected its entrance, and it left by the hole which it had made on entering the hut. The first man attacked was dead; the second was taken to hospital, and there died of his wounds.

There was a fourth victim. I am not certain of the facts in that case, but he was severely injured and was sent to hospital, where, I believe, he recovered with the entire loss of his scalp. That filled up the cup of crime. Almost directly afterwards the murderer killed a bullock; the carcass was poisoned, and the next day the body of a tigress was found close by that of her victim. She was not very large, eight feet from nose to the tip of the tail; she was in splendid condition—teeth perfect and coat glossy—but her legs and feet were disproportionately large to the size of her body. On her head there was a deep clean cut, and one of her fore-legs was gashed, evidently by a Malay chopper. The most curious feature was that in certainly two out of the three cases the tigress, who always attacked by night, the only time when the huts were occupied, effected her entrance by springing on the roof and forcing her way through the thin palm thatching.