by Justin D'Ath
The adult tiger had a full stomach, too. Was that why it hadn’t charged? I kept shuffling slowly backwards, opening the distance between us. Only a few more metres and I’d reach the tree.
Then I stood on something. It rolled under my foot, nearly twisting my ankle. I grunted in pain.
The sound brought the tiger back to life. With a deep, rumbling growl, it started slinking towards me – not charging exactly, but coming fast. And from the look in its eyes, and the way its teeth were bared, I knew what it had in mind.
Tigers normally don’t attack people – especially from the front – but this tiger had been pushed over the edge of normal tiger behaviour. Its territory had been invaded, it had been smacked in the nose with a cricket ball, attacked by dogs, and shot at. Now it was striking back.
Rani and I had about five seconds to live.
But I wasn’t going down without a fight. Dropping the dart gun, I bent and snatched up the thing I’d nearly tripped on.
And the tiger stopped dead.
We were three metres apart. The huge tiger crouched with its teeth bared. I stood facing it with my right arm raised. Its big yellow eyes weren’t looking at me, they were focused on what was in my hand.
A three-hundred-kilo tiger versus a 160-gram cricket ball. It should have been no contest. But the tiger must have remembered what had happened last time it saw the cricket ball. It shifted its gaze from the ball to me, glaring deep into my eyes. Then it turned and went slinking off into the forest to my right.
I lowered my trembling arm and took a couple of big breaths to steady my jangled nerves. Phew!
‘You are very lucky to be alive, young man,’ said a familiar voice.
The maharaja emerged from the forest to my left. He came walking towards me, smiling broadly. But the smile disappeared when I yelled at him.
‘STOP!’
His mouth dropped open. I guess he wasn’t used to people giving him orders. And he certainly wasn’t going to take orders from a fourteen-year-old boy.
He kept walking.
It left me with no choice. I twisted my upper body towards him, cocking my right arm like a slips fielder about to throw down the stumps.
The maharaja’s expression changed from surprise to indignation. ‘WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, YOU –’
Before he could call me a nincompoop for the second time that day, I hurled the cricket ball with all my might.
24
WHACK!
I should have yelled ‘SNAKE’, not ‘STOP’. But when someone’s about to die, it can be difficult to choose the right thing to say. And ‘STOP’ would have worked fine if the maharaja had obeyed me.
Because I’d seen something he hadn’t – a sinewy grey shadow gliding through the long grass. If the maharaja had stopped, he wouldn’t have trodden on it.
The king cobra reared up like a two-metre-high jack-in-the-box beside the startled maharaja’s shoulder.
And struck.
But something personally autographed by eleven world champion Australian cricket players struck it first.
WHACK!
25
TIGER TROUBLE
While one of the maharaja’s men measured the dead snake and scribbled details in a notebook, the other man tended to the dogs. Two had several deep cuts that needed stitches, while the third was just a bit scratched and knocked about. They were lucky, I thought.
I felt lucky, too. All of us were lucky except the cobra. I hadn’t meant to kill it. But the man taking measurements said it was very old and would probably have died soon anyway.
‘It has lived a very long and good life,’ he said. ‘In this forest there will be very many children of this snake.’
I was happy to get out of the forest. Kasime and I carried the tiger cubs and the two men in khaki carried the injured dogs. The maharaja had the dart gun. He led us back to the vehicle. It was a green four-wheel-drive truck with the head of a tiger painted on the doors. The maharaja’s two men had that same picture on the pockets of their shirts. Under the head, in yellow script, was writing in both Hindi and English. The English part said: RAMID TIGER PROJECT.
‘Do you think the Ramid Tiger Project will be able to return these cubs to the wild?’ I asked the maharaja.
He nodded. ‘I am sure we can.’
I looked at him in surprise. ‘Are you connected with it?’
‘It is my organisation,’ he said. ‘I am Maharaja Ramid Singh, managing director of the Ramid Tiger Project.’
Suddenly I felt embarrassed. ‘Is that why you came after us with the sword? Because you wanted to save the cubs?’
Maharaja Ramid Singh looked embarrassed, too. ‘I am most deeply sorry. I thought you were trying to take the tigers from our country. I thought you were a smuggler.’
So I told him the full story. When I’d finished, the maharaja shifted his eyes from me to Kasime, then back again.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘I am certainly honoured to meet the brother of champion Australian batsman Nathan Fox.’
‘He’s really a wicket-keeper.’
The maharaja’s eyes twinkled. ‘Now he is famous all over India as a batsman. And from what I have seen today, one day his younger brother will be a famous fast bowler.’
‘It was a lucky throw,’ I said.
‘Very lucky for me,’ laughed Maharaja Ramid Singh. His face became serious when he turned to my companion. ‘Is it true, kasime, that you lost your family in the tsunami?’
Kasime’s eyes welled up and he buried his face for a couple of seconds in Raju’s fur. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘You risked your life for that cub,’ said the maharaja.
‘He is named for my brother who is dead, sir.’
Maharaja Ramid Singh was silent for a moment. He seemed deep in thought. ‘Young man,’ he said finally, ‘I have a question to ask you. I have been looking for another wildlife ranger to help look after my baby tigers. I will pay this person a fair salary, and give him a first-class place to live. Would you be interested in doing this work for me, Kasime?’
‘Can I look after Raju and Rani?’
‘These cubs would be your number-one project.’
‘Yes sir, Mr Maharajaramidsingh!’ kasime said enthusiastically. ‘I will be your very best wildlife ranger!’
The maharaja turned to me. ‘What about you, Sam? Would you like to become a wildlife ranger?’
I shook my head – reluctantly. It was exactly the type of work I planned to do when I was older. ‘No thanks, Maharaja. I still go to school.’
‘I’m sure we could take care of that,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘i’ll be hiring a first-rate tutor so Kasime doesn’t fall behind in his schooling, and I could do the same for you.’
It was a tempting offer. I felt almost envious of the future that lay ahead of Kasime. But it wasn’t for me – at least not for a few more years.
‘My parents probably wouldn’t go for it,’ I said.
Maharaja Ramid Singh winked. He handed me his gold mobile phone. ‘Then you’d better make a phone call,’ he said.
Mum answered on the very first ring.
‘Sam?’
‘Hi Mum.’
‘Where are you?’ she cried. ‘We caught a flight to the town you mentioned, but you weren’t on the train.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘We had to get off.’
I heard a big sigh from Mum – the type of sigh she makes when she knows there’s a long story coming. She had heard a lot of those stories in the past twelve months.
‘What happened, Sam?’ she asked.
Stroking the matted fur between Rani’s ears, I tried to think of a good place to start.
‘Well, you see, Mum, we had a bit of tiger trouble …’
With thanks to Chris Nice and Mitchell Phillips,
who told me why Sam went to India
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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2010
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