The Major followed the direction of my gaze and remarked, whimsically :
"Admiring my deaf tiger."
"Deaf tiger?" I queried.
"Never heard the yarn ?" interposed the Colonel, looking at me over the match lighting a wheezy briar.
I turned inquiringly from one to other of the two men. We had just finished tea in the glazed drawing room of the Major's bungalow, situated at the summit of a ghat in the Nilgiris, commanding an exceptionally fine panorama of the Mysore jungles unfolding its velvet green expanse 4,000 ft below. My attention had been attracted by a large tiger skin - one of many skins and trophies of the jungle - adorning the walls of the drawing room.
"No," I answered.
"Tell him, Bill," suggested the Colonel.
The Major is a man to whom big game shikar is an obsession. The solitudes of the jungle hold far more attraction to him than the giddy whirl of social life in a hill station. So that, once started on his favourite theme, he does not require much persuasion to continue.
"V a r i u m et m u t a b i l e," commenced the Major, lighting his own pipe, "is as true in regard to tigers as in its original application. It adds not a little to the excitement of pursuit, because one never can tell just what a tiger will do in any given circumstance. A few years ago, I was in camp at Pirmund in the Kundahs, twenty-five miles from Ootacamund. One afternoon, finding time hanging heavy on my hands, I took my shikari and four other men and left the camp, with the intention of
beating likely sholas or ravines, for woodcock. As one never knows what my turn up on excursions like these, I also took a rifle, a .423 Mauser.
"Woodcock failed to materialise. After a three hour trudge my bag consisted of a single snipe, one or two bird seen. It was nearly 5 p.m. , and we commenced disconsolately to return to camp. We had not gone far, when a gun - bearer drew my attention to reddish, fawn - coloured animal , of vague outline, standing on a grassy spur about 1,500 yards away, on the farther side of the big swamp. I focussed my glasses, and discovered the animal to be a tiger. I watched him stretch out in knee - deep grass, head turned in our direction, the rays of a declining sun showing up his golden flanks and white chest. I quickly took stock of the situation, and decided to stalk him. Leaving others where they were, I changed my gun for the rifle; and , accompanied by the shikari, dropped into a watercourse. Hidden from view , we made a detour towards the spur, until we were confronted with the choice of two routes leading to the top. Selecting the one on the left that passed on the outskirts of a small
shola, we hoped to attain a position on the tiger's right. The side of the spur was steep, and the pace was slow : especially, as I anticipated a quick shot when I reached my destination, and hurried climbing up a hill side never makes for good marksmanship.
"When I reached the edge of the summit, I peered cautiously over ; hoping to see the tiger lying about 80 yards away, and much on the same level. I was not able to locate him, and was faced with the conundrum as to whether he had gone or lay hidden in the grass. A closer approach revealed that he had moved, but the wiry grass retained no tracks. What had actually happened was that as we climbed up the left side of the spur, the tiger had come down the right, passing unseen by us within fifty yards. The men left behind had watched the whole proceedings.
"Hearing monkeys chattering in a big
shola nearby , from which the tiger must have emerged in the beginning , I feared he had returned and I had lost him. Still, there was a chance that he might fallow a game path over an open spur, leading towards a waterfall in the vicinity -- a favourite line with tigers in these hills. I sat down, and commanded the path. I waited ten minutes; then, as it was growing late, decided reluctantly to abandon the pursuit.
"Rifle slung over one shoulder -- with the shikari fallowing -- I led the way to the small
shola, along a path I knew would bring me to the spot where I had left the men. We made no attempt at concealment, thinking it very unlikely to meet friend stripes. Yet, we had scarcely covered fifty yards when, rounding a bend, we came upon what appeared at first sight to be a reddish ant-heep on the path ahead. It was only twenty yards away, as we measured the distance later. A hurried, searching glance in the darkening light showed it to be tiger, head turned in the opposite direction, ears cocked forward, a little of the white of the right cheek showing.
"It was the work of few seconds to unsling the rifle, slip back the safety-catch, and fire. At such close range it was practically impossible to miss, and he fell over on his side. Calling to the shikari, I clambered up hill so as to get above the tiger; from where I pumped in a second shot to make assurance doubly assured. I then dispatched the shikari to summon the men; and , while awaiting their arrival, fired a third shot when I saw the tail twitch in a last muscular effort. Afterwards, we found that this shot had been deflected by a sapling.
"When the men arrived it was obvious that the tiger was dead. We went forward , and dragged him into better light. He taped 9'-5" between pegs ( without stretching ), and possessed a remarkably fine coat. In build he was disappointing, being lanky.
"While standing near the body, I was puzzled. That sixth sense of a shikari struck me that something in the tiger's behaviour had been incomprehensible. But it was not until my chauffeur, Bob, who was with the men, called my attention to an old wound in the head, between the eye and ear on the left side , from which pus was oozing, that I realized suddenly I had omitted all precautions to silence. I remembered then that I was wearing heavy hobnailed boots of a type not conducive to silence, and that the shikari and I had strode carelessly along the path, calling to mind the crackle of a twig under my foot when we had stopped at seeing the tiger ahead. Also, that I had made a certain amount of noise when unslinging the rifle and clicking back the safety-catch. Yet, though normally a tiger's hearing may be likened to a microphone, this one had given no indication of our presence. It was strange , and the only conclusion I can arrive at, unique in my experience as a big game shot, is that the tiger was stone deaf ! It was interesting to find afterwards, that the old wound covered a crack right across the skull : though the impact of my first bullet had smashed up the vertebrae of the neck, and re-opened the fissure.
" How the wound was caused is matter of conjecture. Most likely, the tiger ran into a spike of wood, though in that case one would have expected to find splinters remaining in the wound. Possibly, it may have been caused by a bullet fired from some old muzzle-loading gun, whose powder was not sufficiently strong to cause proper penetration, and the bullet dropped out when the wound suppurated. Less likely, the injury may have been due to the horn of a sambhur which the tiger had killed. It is an interesting speculation the truth of which we shall never know."
The Major ceased speaking. The Colonel stretched himself, and said : "That was thirsty work, old man. What about a drink?"
_____________________________________
This story had been reproduced from my book ' WILD ANECDOTES FROM THE SHADOW OF TIME ', a fine collection of wild life memoirs and articles taken from the issues of a British era magazine that published in India from 1920 to1938.
Foreword by Dr. Asad R Rahmani. Former Director - Bombay Natural History Society.
Available at Amazon.in , Amazon.co.uk , Amazon.com and Kindle.
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