by Grant Allen
He had reason, for they were as tasteful as they were dainty and comfortable. And I could not for the life of me make out why his hospitable inclination should be voted ‘ridiculous.’ But Mrs. Balmossie appeared to find all natives alike a huge joke together. She never even spoke of them without a condescending smile of distant compassion. Indeed, most Anglo-Indians seem first to do their best to Anglicise the Hindoo, and then to laugh at him for aping the Englishman.
After we had been three days at the palace and had spent hours in the wonderful temples and ruins, the Maharajah announced with considerable pride at breakfast one morning that he had got up a tiger-hunt in our special honour.
Lord Southminster rubbed his hands.
‘Ha, that’s right, Maharaj,’ he said, briskly. ‘I do love big game. To tell yah the truth, old man, that’s just what I came heah for.’
‘You do me too much honour,’ the Hindoo answered, with quiet sarcasm. ‘My town and palace may have little to offer that is worth your attention; but I am glad that my big game, at least, has been lucky enough to attract you.’
The remark was thrown away on the pea-green young man. He had described his host to me as ‘a black boundah.’ Out of his own mouth I condemned him — he supplied the very word — he was himself nothing more than a born bounder.
A TIGER-HUNT IS NOT A THING TO BE GOT UP LIGHTLY.
During the next few days, the preparations for the tiger-hunt occupied all the Maharajah’s energies. ‘You know, Miss Cayley,’ he said to me, as we stood upon the big stairs, looking down on the Hindoo city, ‘a tiger-hunt is not a thing to be got up lightly. Our people themselves don’t like killing a tiger. They reverence it too much. They’re afraid its spirit might haunt them afterwards and bring them bad luck. That’s one of our superstitions.’
‘You do not share it yourself, then?’ I asked.
He drew himself up and opened his palms, with a twinkling of pendant emeralds. ‘I am royal,’ he answered, with naïve dignity, ‘and the tiger is a royal beast. Kings know the ways of kings. If a king kills what is kingly, it owes him no grudge for it. But if a common man or a low caste man were to kill a tiger — who can say what might happen?’
I saw he was not himself quite free from the superstition.
‘Our peasants,’ he went on, fixing me with his great black eyes, ‘won’t even mention the tiger by name, for fear of offending him: they believe him to be the dwelling-place of a powerful spirit. If they wish to speak of him, they say, “the great beast,” or “my lord, the striped one.” Some think the spirit is immortal except at the hands of a king. But they have no objection to see him destroyed by others. They will even point out his whereabouts, and rejoice over his death; for it relieves the village of a serious enemy, and they believe the spirit will only haunt the huts of those who actually kill him.’
‘Then you know where each tiger lives?’ I asked.
‘As well as your gamekeepers in England know which covert may be drawn for foxes. Yes; ’tis a royal sport, and we keep it for Maharajahs. I myself never hunt a tiger till some European visitor of distinction comes to Moozuffernuggar, that I may show him good sport. This tiger we shall hunt to-morrow, for example, he is a bad old hand. He has carried off the buffaloes of my villagers over yonder for years and years, and of late he has also become a man-eater. He once ate a whole family at a meal — a man, his wife, and his three children. The people at Janwargurh have been pestering me for weeks to come and shoot him; and each week he has eaten somebody — a child or a woman; the last was yesterday — but I waited till you came, because I thought it would be something to show you that you would not be likely to see elsewhere.’
‘And you let the poor people go on being eaten, that we might enjoy this sport!’ I cried.
He shrugged his shoulders, and opened his palms. ‘They were villagers, you know — ryots: mere tillers of the soil — poor naked peasants. I have thousands of them to spare. If a tiger eats ten of them, they only say, “It was written upon their foreheads.” One woman more or less — who would notice her at Moozuffernuggar?’
Then I perceived that the Maharajah was a gentleman, but still a barbarian.
The eventful morning arrived at last, and we started, all agog, for the jungle where the tiger was known to live. Elsie excused herself. She remarked to me the night before, as I brushed her back hair for her, that she had ‘half a mind’ not to go. ‘My dear,’ I answered, giving the brush a good dash, ‘for a higher mathematician, that phrase lacks accuracy. If you were to say “seven-eighths of a mind” it would be nearer the mark. In point of fact, if you ask my opinion, your inclination to go is a vanishing quantity.’
She admitted the impeachment with an accusing blush. ‘You’re quite right, Brownie; to tell you the truth, I’m afraid of it.’
‘So am I, dear; horribly afraid. Between ourselves, I’m in a deadly funk of it. But “the brave man is not he that feels no fear”; and I believe the same principle applies almost equally to the brave woman. I mean “that fear to subdue” as far as I am able. The Maharajah says I shall be the first girl who has ever gone tiger-hunting. I’m frightened out of my life. I never held a gun in my born days before. But, Elsie, recollect, this is splendid journalism! I intend to go through with it.’
‘You offer yourself on the altar, Brownie.’
‘I do, dear; I propose to die in the cause. I expect my proprietor to carve on my tomb, “Sacred to the memory of the martyr of journalism. She was killed, in the act of taking shorthand notes, by a Bengal tiger.”’
We started at early dawn, a motley mixture. My short bicycling skirt did beautifully for tiger-hunting. There was a vast company of native swells, nawabs and ranas, in gorgeous costumes, whose precise names and titles I do not pretend to remember; there were also Major Balmossie, Lord Southminster, the Maharajah, and myself — all mounted on gaily-caparisoned elephants. We had likewise, on foot, a miserable crowd of wretched beaters, with dirty white loin-cloths. We were all very brave, of course — demonstratively brave — and we talked a great deal at the start about the exhilaration given by ‘the spice of danger.’ But it somehow struck me that the poor beaters on foot had the majority of the danger and extremely little of the exhilaration. Each of us great folk was mounted on his own elephant, which carried a light basket-work howdah in two compartments: the front one intended for the noble sportsman, the back one for a servant with extra guns and ammunition. I pretended to like it, but I fear I trembled visibly. Our mahouts sat on the elephants’ necks, each armed with a pointed goad, to whose admonition the huge beasts answered like clock-work. A born journalist always pretends to know everything before hand, so I speak carelessly of the ‘mahout,’ as if he were a familiar acquaintance. But I don’t mind telling you aside, in confidence, that I had only just learnt the word that morning.
The Maharajah protested at first against my taking part in the actual hunt, but I think his protest was merely formal. In his heart of hearts I believe he was proud that the first lady tiger-hunter should have joined his party.
Dusty and shadeless, the road from Moozuffernuggar fares straight across the plain towards the crumbling mountains. Behind, in the heat mist, the castle and palace on their steeply-scarped crag, with the squalid town that clustered at their feet, reminded me once more most strangely of Edinburgh, where I used to spend my vacations from Girton. But the pitiless sun differed greatly from the gray haar of the northern metropolis. It warmed into intense white the little temples of the wayside, and beat on our heads with tropical garishness.
I am bound to admit also that tiger-hunting is not quite all it is cracked up to be. In my fancy I had pictured the gallant and bloodthirsty beast rushing out upon us full pelt from some grass-grown nullah at the first sniff of our presence, and fiercely attacking both men and elephants. Instead of that, I will confess the whole truth: frightened as at least one of us was of the tiger, the tiger was still more desperately frightened of his human assailants. I could see clearly tha
t, so far from rushing out of his own accord to attack us, his one desire was to be let alone. He was horribly afraid; he skulked in the jungle like a wary old fox in a trusty spinney. There was no nullah (whatever a nullah may be), there was only a waste of dusty cane-brake. We encircled the tall grass patch where he lurked, forming a big round with a ring-fence of elephants. The beaters on foot, advancing, half naked, with a caution with which I could fully sympathise, endeavoured by loud shouts and gesticulations to rouse the royal beast to a sense of his position. Not a bit of it: the royal beast declined to be drawn; he preferred retirement. The Maharajah, whose elephant was stationed next to mine, even apologised for the resolute cowardice with which he clung to his ignoble lurking-place.
The beaters drew in: the elephants, raising their trunks in air and sniffing suspicion, moved slowly inward. We had girt him round now with a perfect ring, through which he could not possibly break without attacking somebody. The Maharajah kept a fixed eye on my personal safety. But still the royal animal crouched and skulked, and still the black beaters shrieked, howled, and gesticulated. At last, among the tall perpendicular lights and shadows of the big grasses and bamboos, I seemed to see something move — something striped like the stems, yet passing slowly, slowly, slowly between them. It moved in a stealthy undulating line. No one could believe till he saw it how the bright flame-coloured bands of vivid orange-yellow on the monster’s flanks, and the interspersed black stripes, could fade away and harmonise, in their native surroundings, with the lights and shades of the upright jungle. It was a marvel of mimicry. ‘Look there!’ I cried to the Maharajah, pointing one eager hand. ‘What is that thing there, moving?’
He stared where I pointed. ‘By Jove,’ he cried, raising his rifle with a sportsman’s quickness, ‘you have spotted him first! The tiger!’
The terrified beast stole slowly and cautiously through the tall grasses, his lithe, silken side gliding in and out snakewise, and only his fierce eyes burning bright with gleaming flashes between the gloom of the jungle. Once I had seen him, I could follow with ease his sinuous path among the tangled bamboos, a waving line of beauty in perpetual motion. The Maharajah followed him too, with his keen eyes, and pointed his rifle hastily. But, quick as he was, Lord Southminster was before him. I had half expected to find the pea-green young man turn coward at the last moment; but in that I was mistaken: I will do him the justice to say, whatever else he was, he was a born sportsman. The gleam of joy in his leaden eye when he caught sight of the tiger, the flush of excitement on his pasty face, the eagerness of his alert attitude, were things to see and remember. That moment almost ennobled him. In sight of danger, the best instincts of the savage seemed to revive within him. In civilised life he was a poor creature; face to face with a wild beast he became a mighty shikari. Perhaps that was why he was so fond of big-game shooting. He may have felt it raised him in the scale of being.
He lifted his rifle and fired. He was a cool shot, and he wounded the beast upon its left shoulder. I could see the great crimson stream gush out all at once across the shapely sides, staining the flame-coloured stripes and reddening the black shadows. The tiger drew back, gave a low, fierce growl, and then crouched among the jungle. I saw he was going to leap; he bent his huge backbone into a strong downward curve, took in a deep breath, and stood at bay, glaring at us. Which elephant would he attack? That was what he was now debating. Next moment, with a frightful R’-r’-r’-r’, he had straightened out his muscles, and, like a bolt from a bow, had launched his huge bulk forward.
I never saw his charge. I never knew he had leapt upon me. I only felt my elephant rock from side to side like a ship in a storm. He was trumpeting, shaking, roaring with rage and pain, for the tiger was on his flanks, its claws buried deep in the skin of his forehead. I could not keep my seat; I felt myself tossed about in the frail howdah like a pill in a pill-box. The elephant, in a death grapple, was trying to shake off his ghastly enemy. For a minute or two, I was conscious of nothing save this swinging movement. Then, opening my eyes for a second, I saw the tiger, in all his terrible beauty, clinging to the elephant’s head by the claws of his fore paws, and struggling for a foothold on its trunk with his mighty hind legs, in a wounded agony of despair and vengeance. He would sell his life dear; he would have one or other of us.
Lord Southminster raised his rifle again; but the Maharajah shouted aloud in an angry voice: ‘Don’t fire! Don’t fire! You will kill the lady! You can’t aim at him like that. The beast is rocking so that no one can say where a shot will take effect. Down with your gun, sir, instantly!’
IT WENT OFF UNEXPECTEDLY.
My mahout, unable to keep his seat with the rocking, now dropped off his cushion among the scrub below. He could speak a few words of English. ‘Shoot, Mem Sahib, shoot!’ he cried, flinging his hands up. But I was tossed to and fro, from side to side, with my rifle under my arm. It was impossible to aim. Yet in sheer terror I tried to draw the trigger. I failed; but somehow I caught my rifle against the side of my cage. Something snapped in it somewhere. It went off unexpectedly, without my aiming or firing. I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, I saw a swimming picture of the great sullen beast, loosing his hold on the elephant. I saw his brindled face; I saw his white tusks. But his gleaming pupils burned bright no longer. His jaw was full towards me: I had shot him between the eyes. He fell, slowly, with blood streaming from his nostrils, and his tongue lolling out. His muscles relaxed; his huge limbs grew limp. In a minute, he lay stretched at full length on the ground, with his head on one side, a grand, terrible picture.
My mahout flung up his hands in wonder and amazement. ‘My father!’ he cried aloud. ‘Truly, the Mem Sahib is a great shikari!’
The Maharajah stretched across to me. ‘That was a wonderful shot!’ he exclaimed. ‘I could never have believed a woman could show such nerve and coolness.’
Nerve and coolness, indeed! I was trembling all over like an Italian greyhound, every limb a jelly; and I had not even fired: the rifle went off of itself without me. I am innocent of having ever endangered the life of a haycock. But once more I dissembled. ‘Yes, it was a difficult shot,’ I said jauntily, as if I rather liked tiger-hunting. ‘I didn’t think I’d hit him.’ Still the effect of my speech was somewhat marred, I fear, by the tears that in spite of me rolled down my cheek silently.
‘‘Pon honah, I nevah saw a finah piece of shooting in my life,’ Lord Southminster drawled out. Then he added aside, in an undertone, ‘Makes a fellow moah determined to annex her than evah!’
I sat in my howdah, half dazed. I hardly heard what they were saying. My heart danced like the elephant. Then it stood still within me. I was only aware of a feeling of faintness. Luckily for my reputation as a mighty sportswoman, however, I just managed to keep up, and did not actually faint, as I was more than half inclined to do.
Next followed the native pæan. The beaters crowded round the fallen beast in a chorus of congratulation. Many of the villagers also ran out, with prayers and ejaculations, to swell our triumph. It was all like a dream. They hustled round me and salaamed to me. A woman had shot him! Wonderful! A babel of voices resounded in my ears. I was aware that pure accident had elevated me into a heroine.
I SAW HIM NOW THE ORIENTAL DESPOT.
‘Put the beast on a pad elephant,’ the Maharajah called out.
The beaters tied ropes round his body and raised him with difficulty.
The Maharajah’s face grew stern. ‘Where are the whiskers?’ he asked, fiercely, in his own tongue, which Major Balmossie interpreted for me.
The beaters and the villagers, bowing low and expanding their hands, made profuse expressions of ignorance and innocence. But the fact was patent — the grand face had been mangled. While they had crowded in a dense group round the fallen carcass, somebody had cut off the lips and whiskers and secreted them.
‘They have ruined the skin!’ the Maharajah cried out in angry tones. ‘I intended it for the lady. I shall have them all searched, and
the man who has done this thing — —’
He broke off, and looked around him. His silence was more terrible by far than the fiercest threat. I saw him now the Oriental despot. All the natives drew back, awe-struck.
‘The voice of a king is the voice of a great god,’ my mahout murmured, in a solemn whisper. Then nobody else said anything.
‘Why do they want the whiskers?’ I asked, just to set things straight again. ‘They seem to have been in a precious hurry to take them!’
The Maharajah’s brow cleared. He turned to me once more with his European manner. ‘A tiger’s body has wonderful power after his death,’ he answered. ‘His fangs and his claws are very potent charms. His heart gives courage. Whoever eats of it will never know fear. His liver preserves against death and pestilence. But the highest virtue of all exists in his whiskers. They are mighty talismans. Chopped up in food, they act as a slow poison, which no doctor can detect, no antidote guard against. They are also a sovereign remedy against magic or the evil eye. And administered to women, they make an irresistible philtre, a puissant love-potion. They secure you the heart of whoever drinks them.’
‘I’d give a couple of monkeys for those whiskahs,’ Lord Southminster murmured, half unnoticed.
IT’S I WHO AM THE WINNAH.
We began to move again. ‘We’ll go on to where we know there is another tiger,’ the Maharajah said, lightly, as if tigers were partridges. ‘Miss Cayley, you will come with us?’
I rested on my laurels. (I was quivering still from head to foot.) ‘No, thank you, Maharajah,’ as unconcernedly as I could; ‘I’ve had quite enough sport for my first day’s tiger-hunting. I think I’ll go back now, and write a newspaper account of this little adventure.’
‘You have had luck,’ he put in. ‘Not everyone kills a tiger his first day out. This will make good reading.’
‘I wouldn’t have missed it for a hundred pounds,’ I answered.
