When the Tiger Was King

by Ruskin Bond

  When the box was made – and though Hin Mong and his chow-boys threw it together hastily, it was a good strong piece of work – I loaded it and the coil of rope and the block-and-tackle on to the truck and sent this freight on its way to the rubber plantation, putting it in charge of Ali's nephew, who was then acting as his uncle's assistant at the compound. I gave him a driver and two other boys and sent them on their journey after Ali had given his nephew instructions on how to reach the rubber plantation. Four boys were needed to carry the supplies, three miles from the end of the road through the jungle trail to the plantation.

  My own car, which had carried Ali and me on so many other important trips, carried us again. Our only baggage was my lasso, which I had dropped on the floor of this speedy but badly mutilated conveyance of mine that for want of a better name I called an automobile.

  As I had not seen the Sultan since the day he turned his major and those eight soldiers over to me, I decided to drop in on him on the way to the rubber plantation.

  Having learned he was at the fort, I headed for these glorified barracks, where H.H. greeted me effusively. He came out of the fort as we pulled up, leaning over the side of the car. He congratulated me a couple of times on my success in getting the tiger into the pit. Then, very solemnly – and for half a second I did not realise that he had reverted to his bantering manner – he said, 'Glad you stop here before you go to take the tiger from the pit. I would never forgive you if you do not say goodbye before the tiger eat you.'

  Laughing, I told H.H., whose eyes were resting on the lasso at the bottom of the car, 'You don't seem very confident, do you?'

  'Confident?' came the reply. 'Sure! You are going to catch the tiger with a rope like cowboy, no? Very simple, this method, no? Very simple. Why don't you try catch elephant this way too? Very simple.' Then the Sultan broke into one of those hearty roars of his, slapping his thighs as he doubled up with laughter.

  'Don't you think I can do it, H.H.?' I asked.

  Tactfully, he declined to answer with a yes or a no. All he said was, 'This is a tiger, not an American cow.' This was more eloquent than a dozen noes.

  'I'll tell you what, H.H.,' I said. 'I'll make a little bet with you, just for the fun of it. I'll bet you a bottle of champagne that I'll have that tiger alive in Johore Bahru before the sun goes down.' H.H. never could be induced to make a wager for money with a friend; that's why I stipulated wine.

  'I bet you,' he grinned. 'But how can I collect if the tiger eats you?' (Turning to Ali with mock sternness.) 'Ali, you do not forget that your tuan owes me a bottle champagne if he does not come back!' Then he exploded into another one of his body-shaking laughs.

  We were off in a few minutes. Clouds were gathering overhead and it looked as if it was going to rain. I wanted to get my job over with before the storm broke. Stepping on the gas, I waved a good-bye to H.H., and we were on our way.

  I was worried by the overcast skies, but I did not regard the impending storm as a serious obstacle. It looked like a 'Sumatra,' a heavy rain and wind-storm of short duration, followed by bright sunshine that always seems freakish to those who do not know the East. The chief difficulty imposed by the storm, in the event that it broke, would be the slippery footing that would result. A secondary problem would be the stiffening of the ropes. Rope, when it has been well exposed to rain, hardens somewhat, although it can be handled. If it rained, my job would be so much tougher.

  We tore along at maximum speed, my engine heralding our approach all along the line with a mighty roar. Considering the terrific racket, I had a right to expect the speedometer to indicate a new speed record instead of a mere seventy an hour. My bus always got noisy when I opened her up, reminding me of a terrier trying to bark like a St. Bernard.

  The skies grew darker as we raced along and when we were a short distance from the point where it was necessary to complete the journey on foot, a light rain started to fall. By the time we were half-way to the plantation it was raining hard and Ali and I were nicely drenched when we arrived.

  The rain had driven many of the coolies to cover, but at least a score of them were still standing around when we pulled up. The major and his soldiers, soaked to the skin, stood by faithfully, the major even taking advantage of this inopportune moment to congratulate me again – he had done it before – on my trapping of the man-eater. I appreciated this sporting attitude after the failure of his search in the jungle. However, I did not feel very triumphant. The tough part of the job was ahead of me. Getting a tiger out of a pit into a cage in a driving rainstorm is dangerous, strenuous work.

  I got busy at once. Taking out my knife, I began cutting my coil of native rope into extra nooses. Then I knocked aside some of the stakes that secured the pit's cover, rolled away some of the logs, and, stretching out flat with my head and shoulders extending out over the hole, began to make passes at the roaring enemy below with my lasso rope. One advantage of the rain was that it weakened the tiger's footing, making it impossible for him to repeat the tremendous leap upward he had made earlier in the day when I took my first look down the pit. As I heard him sloshing around in the mud and water at the bottom of his prison, I felt reassured. If the rain put me at a disadvantage, it did the same to the enemy also.

  With the major standing by, rifle ready for action, I continued to fish for the tiger with my rope; the black skies giving me bad light by which to work. Once I got the lay of the land, I managed to drop the rope over the animal's head, but before I could pull up the slack – the rain had made the rope 'slow' – he flicked it off with a quick movement of the paw. A second time I got it over his head, but this time his problem was even easier for the forepart of the stiffening slack landed close enough to his mouth to enable him to bite the rope into two with one snap. Making a new loop in the lasso I tried over and over but he either eluded my throw or fought free of the noose with lightning-fast movements in which teeth and claws worked together in perfect coordination as he snarled his contempt for my efforts. The rain continued to come down in torrents. When it rains in Johore, it rains – an ordinary Occidental rain-storm being a mere sprinkle compared to an honest-to-goodness 'Sumatra.'

  By now I was so thoroughly drenched that I no longer minded the rain on my body; it was only when the water dripped down into my eyes then I found myself growing irritated.

  After working in this fashion for an hour till my shoulders ached from the awkward position I was in, I succeeded in looping a noose over the animal's head and through his mouth, using a fairly dry fresh rope that responded when I gave it a quick jerk. This accomplished my purpose, which was to draw the corners of his mouth inward so that his lips were stretched taut over his teeth, making it impossible for him to bite through the rope without biting through his lips. I yelled to the coolies who were standing by ready for action to tug away at the rope, which they did, pulling the crouching animal's head and forequarters clear of the bottom of the pit. This was the first good look at the foe I had had. The eyes hit me the hardest. Small for the enormous head, they glared an implacable hatred.

  Quickly bringing another rope into play, I ran a second hitch around the struggling demon's neck, another group of coolies (also working under Ali's direction) pulling away at this rope from the side of the pit opposite the first ropehold. It was no trouble, with two groups of boys holding the animal's head and shoulders up, to loop a third noose under the forelegs and a fourth under the body. Working with feverish haste, I soon had eight different holds on the man-eater of Johore. With coolies tugging away at each line, we pulled the monster up nearly even with the top of the pit and held him there. His mouth, distorted with rage plus what the first rope was doing to it, was a hideous sight. With hind legs he was thrashing away furiously, also doing his frantic best to get his roped forelegs into action.

  I was about to order the lowering of the box when one of the coolies let out a piercing scream. He was the number one boy on the first rope. Looking around I saw that he had lost his footing
in the slippery mud, and, in his frenzied efforts to save himself, was sliding head first for the mouth of the pit. I was in a position where I could grab him, but I went at it so hard that I lost my own footing and the two of us would have rolled over into the pit if Ali, who was following me around with an armful of extra nooses, hadn't quickly grabbed me and slipped one of these ropes between my fingers. With a quick tug, he and one of the soldiers pulled us out of danger.

  The real menace, if the coolie and I had rolled over into the pit was that the other coolies would probably have lost their heads and let go the ropes. With them holding on there was no serious danger, for the tiger was firmly lashed.

  I've wondered more than once what would have occurred if the native and I had gone splashing to the bottom of that hole. Every time I think of it, it gives me the creeps; for though the coolies at the ropes were dependable enough when their tuan was around to give them orders, they might easily have gone to pieces, as I've frequendy seen happen, had they suddenly decided that they were leaderless. It wouldn't have been much fun at the bottom of the pit with this brute of a tiger.

  The coolies shrieked but they held. The rain continued to come down in sheets and the ooze around the pit grew worse and worse. Self-conscious now about the slipperiness, the boys were finding it harder than ever to keep their feet.

  The box would have to be lowered at once. With the tiger's head still almost even with the surface of the pit, we let the box down lengthwise, slide door end up. Unable to get too close, we had to manipulate the box with long poles. The hind legs had sufficient play to enable the animal to strike out with them, and time after time, after we painstakingly manoeuvred the cage into position with the open slide door directly under him, our enraged captive would kick it away. In the process the ropes gave a few inches, indicating that the strain was beginning to be too much for the boys. If we were forced to let the animal drop back after getting him to this point, it was a question if we'd ever be able to get him out alive.

  Quickly I went over the situation with Ali. I was growing desperate. With the aid of the major and three of his soldiers we got the box firmly in place, the tired boys at the ropes responding to a command to tug away that lifted the animal a few inches above the point where his thrashing hind legs interfered with keeping it erect. I assigned the three soldiers to keep the box steady with poles which they braced against it. If we shifted the box again in the ooze we might lose our grip on it, so I cautioned them to hold it as it was.

  'Major, I'm now leaving matters in your hands,' I said. 'See that the boys hold on and keep your rifle ready.' Before he had a chance to reply I let myself down into the pit, dodging the flying back feet. Covered with mud from head to foot as a result of my dropping into the slime, I grabbed the tiger by his tail, swung him directly over the opening of the box and fairly roared: 'Let go!' Let go they did, with me leaning on the box to help steady it.

  The man-eater of Johore dropped with a bang to the bottom of Hin Mong's plainest box. I slid the door with a slam, leaned against it and bellowed for hammer and nails. I could feel the imprisoned beast pounding against the sides of his cell as he strove to free himself from the tangle of ropes around him. His drop, of necessity, had folded up his hind legs and I didn't see how he could right himself sufficiently in that narrow box for a lunge against the door at the top; but the brute weighed at least three hundred pounds, and if his weight shifted over against me he might, in my tired condition, knock me over and . . .

  'Get the hammer and nails!' I screamed. 'Damn it, hurry up!' I leaned against the box with all my strength, pressing it against one side of the pit to hold the sliding door firmly closed.

  No hammer! No nails!

  Plastered with mud, my strength rapidly ebbing, I was in a fury over the delay.

  ' Kasi pacoo! [Bring nails!]' I shrieked in Malay, in case my English was not understood. 'Nails! Pacco! Nails' I cried. 'And a hammer, you helpless swine!' There weren't any swine present but that's what I called every one at the moment. I felt the tiger's weight shifting against me and I was mad with desperation.

  The major yelled down that no one could find the nails. The can had been kicked over and the nails were buried in the mud. They had the hammer. . . . Here it goes! I caught it. . . . What the hell good is a hammer without nails?

  'Give me nails, damn it, or I'll murder the pack of you!'

  It was Ali who finally located the nails, buried in the mud, after what seemed like a week and was probably a couple of minutes. Over the side of the pit he scrambled to join me in a splash of mud. With a crazy feverishness I wielded the hammer while Ali held the nails in place, and at last Johore's coolie-killer was nailed down fast. Muffled snarls and growls of rage came through the crevices, left for breathing space.

  Then I recall complaining to Ali that the storm must be getting worse. It was getting blacker. The tuan was wrong. The storm was letting up. Perhaps I mistook the mud that splashed over me as I fell to the floor of the pit, too weak to stand up, for extra heavy raindrops.

  Ali lifted me to my feet and my brain cleared. I suddenly realised that the job was all done, that the man-eater of Johore was in that nailed-down box. I was overjoyed. Only a man in my field can fully realise the thrill I experienced over the capture of this man-eating tiger – the first, to my knowledge, ever brought to the United States.

  Ropes were fastened around the box – (no one feared entering the pit now) – and with the aid of the block-and-tackle, our freight was hauled out of the hole.

  Eight coolies were needed to get our capture back through the slime that was once a dry jungle trail to the highway leading to Johore Bahru. More than once they almost dropped their load, which they bore on carrying poles, as they skidded around in the three miles of sticky muck between the rubber plantation and the asphalt road which now reflected the sunlight, wistfully reappearing in regulation fashion after the rain and wind of the 'Sumatra.' There we loaded the box on to the waiting lorry, which followed Ali and me in my car.

  About forty minutes later as the sun bathed the channel in the reddish glow of its vanishing rays, I planted the man-eater under the nose of the Sultan in front of the United Service Club in Johore Bahru.

  With more mud on me than any one that ever stood at the U.S.C.'s bar, I collected my bet, the hardest-earned champagne I ever tasted.

  The Sultan was so respectful after I won this wager that once or twice I almost wished I hadn't caught his damned man-eater. H.H. is much more fun when he's not respectful. I enjoyed his pop-eyed felicitations but not nearly so much as some of the playful digs he has taken at me.

  The man-eater of Johore, by the way, eventually wound up in the Longfellow Zoological Park, in Minneapolis, Minn.

  Frank Buck with Edward Anthony

  The Man-Eater of Botta Singarum

  was hunting in the Deccan, in the neighbourhood of Mulkapore, when I heard that a man-eating tiger, which I had been after for some days, had been seen skulking near the outskirts of the village of Botta Singarum. I had on a former occasion tracked this cunning brute to one of his lairs, where the remains of several of his victims were discovered, and had twice beaten all his usual haunts in the jungle; but up to this time had never been able to get a shot at him. Sending my gang of trackers on before I mounted my horse, and guided by the villager who brought the news, I made my way to the place where the marauder had been seen the evening before, where I found unmistakable signs that the information I had received was true, as his fresh pugs were plainly visible.

  I sent my horse back to the village, and accompanied by the gang, followed his track through a narrow ravine densely wooded tract. Here the trail became exceedingly difficult to follow, as the brute had evidently been walking about backwards and forwards in the bed and along the banks of a dry nullah, and we could not distinguish his last trail. I caused the band to separate, and for half an hour or so we were wandering about as if in a maze, for the cunning brute had been describing circles, and often by foll
owing the trail, we arrived at the place we started from.

  Whilst we were all at a loss, suddenly I heard a low 'coo' twice repeated, and I knew that Googooloo, who was seldom at fault, was now on warm scent, and from his call I was as certain that the game was afoot as any master of hounds would have been, while breaking cover, to hear his favourite dog give tongue. The gang closed up, and guided by the sound, we made our way through thick bush to where Googooloo was standing by a pool of water in the bed of the nullah.

  Here were unmistakable marks of his having quenched his thirst quite lately, for when we came up the water was still flowing into the deeply-imprinted pugs of his fore feet, which were close to the edge of the pool, and I noticed that the water had still the appearance of having been disturbed and troubled. After having drunk, the brute made his way to some very thick jungle, much overgrown with creepers, through which we could not follow without the aid of our axes. Thus stalking with any hope of success was out of the question, so I held a solemn consultation with Kistimah, Chineah, Googooloo, and the dhoby , as to the best means of proceeding.

  I felt convinced that the brute was still lurking somewhere near at hand in the jungle, for, besides the very recent trail we were on, I fancied I heard the velling of a swarm of monkeys, which I attributed to their having been frightened by his appearance; besides, this was just the kind of place where a tiger would be likely to remain in during the heat of the day, as it afforded cool shade from the sun, and water. All the gang were of my opinion, and Kistimah observed that, on two different occasions, after a post-runner had been carried off, he had remarked that the trail of the tiger led from this part of the jungle to a bend in the road, where he had been known frequently to lie in wait for his prey. 'These man-eaters,' he added, 'are great devils and very cunning, and I should not at all wonder if even now he was watching us from some dark thicket.' As he said this I carefully examined the caps of my rifle, and I observed some of the gang close up with a strange shudder, for this brute had inspired them all with a wholesome fear, and prevented their straggling. Two or three spoke almost in whispers, as if they were afraid of his really being sufficiently near to hear them conspiring for his destruction.