Читать книгу Anecdotes of Big Cats and Other Beasts - David Alec Wilson - Страница 14

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About 1891 a tiger began levying taxes on the little town of Shwegyin (Shwayjeen), in Lower Burma, where the Shwegyin river joins the big Sittang. The people were used to leopards, but tigers had ceased from troubling them so long that, as one said, “you might as well try to persuade us that the dead had arisen as that tigers had come back.” As there had always been tigers in the adjoining mountains, and the forest spread over the country, and touched the town on every side but where the rivers ran, this prejudice would have been surprising, if it had not been so very human. It is hard to persuade men of what they do not like. The people of Shwegyin were not to be talked out of their comfortable security. No words could persuade them to look out for tiger, but the deeds of the beast itself gradually did.

Though tigers and leopards alike are earnest tariff reformers, their schedules differ in details, [75] and as week succeeded week, and the dogs, so dear to leopards, were steadily neglected, and the invisible enemy, hovering around the herds coming home carelessly, anyhow, in the twilight, took calves and cows and bullocks, as they chanced to stray and offer themselves, in a style no Burman leopard ever tries, its capacity for great destruction was allowed to prove its greatness, and the most prejudiced of the local elders was at last candid enough to say, “I fear I may have to admit it to be a tiger when it is dead and I see it.”

At a meeting of the Municipal Committee the president mentioned, adding the losses reported, that the depredations in three months amounted to more than half a year’s taxes on the town. Like other oppressors, it destroyed a great deal more than it needed.

The members groaned in chorus, especially those who had cattle. But one who had no such possessions remained cheerful and broke the silence, saying, “It will die some day.”

A fellow-member who had had losses glared at the speaker, who was remarkably obese, and said, “If the tiger only knew how much better eating some fat men in our town would make, he might be persuaded to change his diet. I wish he would.”

[76] “I never go out at night,” said the obese one, hastily, growing grave, whereat the others laughed, and, recovering his composure, he continued: “Tigers come and tigers go, but the taxes go on for ever. When one official goes, another comes.” Receiving the expected murmur of applause, he added, “That’s what I was going to say.”

It should perhaps be remarked that officials in Burma are proverbially classed with thieves and similar afflictions. We must remember that the civilisation of Burma is older than that of England, and should not be angry when the people there smile at those of us who are simple enough to suppose ourselves anything better than an expensive nuisance.

“Of two equal taxes,” a Socratic member asked, “which do you feel the more—the first you pay, or the second?”

“The second.”

“And the second or the third?”

“The third.”

“And the third or a fourth?”

Then all became eloquent simultaneously, lest an addition to the taxes might be in contemplation.

The conclusion was unanimous that the last [77] tax was ever the worst, and the tiger’s inflictions the hardest of all to bear. This emboldened a sufferer to propose a levy, and municipal compensation to losers—a proposal which his fellow-members declared to be impracticable. There was no lack of sympathy when details were told. Even the obese member remarked, with unaffected emphasis, “I was very sorry for Mother Silver when she lost a cow.” And another fatality was told, and another, and another. If they could have compassed the tiger’s death by voting, it would have quickly died.

It did not die. A vote is seldom more than a good resolution. Deeds always need a doer. The most a vote can do is to ensure the worker elbow-room, and in this instance it was superfluous. Nobody wanted to spare the tiger. How to catch it was the problem. Its ravages were imputed to the English government, which had been confiscating arms. So the Deputy Commissioner lent guns and gave out ammunition gratis. But still the tiger flourished.

In vain did men spend nights in trees, “sitting up over a kill,” as they expressed it. It never returned to cold meat. Why should it, with plenty of fresh cattle available? In vain did they study the ways it went, and sit in ambush. [78] There was an infinite variety about it. It never repeated a catch in the same place and way. To describe completely all its doings, and the plans that failed to catch it, would fill a book.

At an early period of its history the people began to fetch the cattle home by daylight; but that simple device did not defeat it long. True, it loved the darkness better than the light, and the herds came home undiminished. But the tiger was not to be driven back to a lighter diet so easily. He followed his food. The cattle disappeared in the dark from pens and sheds, and tell-tale marks proclaimed that the thief was the enemy with four big legs and ugly claws.

At times there was an intermission of some weeks, long enough to let everyone grow careless again. But it had only gone to the hills, most probably as people go to Carlsbad, to rest its digestive organs. Then it returned to business with appetite refreshed, a very hungry tiger. People began to speak of it with bated breath and shows of humbleness, as an Englishman talks of a lord or a German of an emperor. That feeling grew to a superstitious dread. This was clearly more than an ordinary tiger.

“Perhaps it is a tigress with a litter of hungry kittens,” was a matter-of-fact suggestion, received [79] with a shudder, as if it had been disrespectful, a kind of lese-majesty. Besides, the suggestion was at last seen to be wrong, for once at last, once only, and then only after it had killed its scores, it was seen. A man was riding in the moonlight along the lonely boundary road, and saw it stride across the road, and sit down on the farther side, as if to wait to see him pass. It did not crouch. It sat up squarely, like a cat at home. It raised its head as high as possible, as if to enjoy the coolness of the evening breeze, which was as welcome to the tiger as to any European. On sight of it the rider’s Arab mare began to dance, and turned again and again to bolt backwards. This saved Mr. Stripes, for the rider, though apparently unarmed, had a pistol in his pocket, and had taken it out and was preparing to empty it as he galloped past. But the mare would not go nearer than 30 yards. The tiger became tired of watching her pirouetting, and stood up as if to depart. The rider fired, and at the sound of the shot, which missed, the tiger slouched swiftly into the woods unharmed, and gave no time for a second shot. When the man arrived at his house, a mile away, he found five other men at his gate, waiting for him, and saying, “Come with us. He” (there was no need [80] to be more explicit) “is slaughtering now on the inner side of this road. We know where he’ll cross it, and are going to ambuscade him.”

“No use!” was the reply. “I have just seen him pass.” They went to see if they had guessed aright. But no! The spot they meant to ambuscade was half a mile from the actual crossing-place.

Perhaps the only man in the town who had a gun and did not hunt that tiger was the Sergeant-Instructor, a solitary representative of the British army, stationed in Shwegyin to drill the volunteers. And the reason why he did not go a-hunting, as everybody knew, was that Mrs. Sergeant-Instructor had announced that she would go with him.

She meant it too. “Another lady” in the station had sat up with her husband. Why should she not do likewise? If a tiger fight had been the kind of thing she supposed, such as might be shown in a circus or a tournament, she would have made a magnificent second to her gallant husband, and so he admitted. If only the tiger would come openly to their door in daylight, “instead of skulking in the dark round about, like a coward,” as I believe she said, Mrs. Sergeant-Instructor would have done her duty, and probably a good deal more. And she undoubtedly was [81] disgusted with “the man’s poor spirit.” But every man in the station knew better. As an officer whispered to me: “What would be the use of the man sitting up with Mrs. Sergeant-Instructor? She could not hold her tongue five minutes, not to speak of hours.”

Nevertheless, there was chaff enough at first, which it was hard for him to bear until, in time, the continual failures of experienced hunters, magistrates and foresters, policemen and soldiers and others, became a consolation.

“Ah, the target is easier to see than a tiger,” he would murmur, when scoring at the range.

The range was a clearing in the forest on low ground, upon the municipal boundary, a clearing of about 100 yards wide and 600 long.

One morning the Sergeant-Instructor went to it alone, with a rifle in his hand and two or three cartridges in his pocket. “As a kind of object for the morning’s walk,” he explained, “I meant to fire a shot at the range, to make sure I had got the rifle springs right. It was a bit stiff last Sunday. I had been working at it, to diminish the pull-off.”

As you descend to the range from the main road, you first arrive at the 600 yards’ station, the butts being at the farthest end; and this morning, [82] “seeing all clear,” said he, “I just lay down at 600 yards, and decided to take the shot from there, without going any farther.

“So I shifted about as usual, till I was lying comfortably, and adjusted my sights, and took aim; and then, just before pulling the trigger, I cast my eyes to windward, to the left as it happened, to see what the trees were like, and whether my allowance for the breeze was right. As I was looking at the trees on my left, I saw the tiger come out and walk across the range, to go between me and the target. I was glad there was nobody there. There was no time to talk. It did not hurry, so to speak, but went fast over the ground, fast and straight, like a man going to catch a train, with no time to lose, but too big a bug to run—you know the kind of thing.”

“Like a man going over a level-crossing?”

“You might say that, but he did not look up and down. He stared straight in front of him, and I am sure he did not see me at all, or look to see anything on either side.”

“Like the ideal Christian pilgrim, not looking right or left?”

The Sergeant seemed puzzled. He had not noticed anything pious about it. So I tried again.

[83] “Like a dog after game? Perhaps he was after something?”

“That’s it, that’s it. I’m sure he had sport in sight.”

“Preoccupied, so to speak?”

“Very much so. You know there are always cattle grazing on the far side of the range. He was hard at them. I just had time to shoot and no more. I noticed he would cross at 300 yards, and, doing everything as fast as I could, I lowered my sights, and aimed, and fired. He dropped, and never moved, and … here he is. …”

It had been a fine tiger, in the prime of life; and, as doctors say after a post-mortem, the corpse had all the appearance of having been extremely well nourished. Death was the result of a sudden failure of the heart’s action, due to violence.

The Sergeant-Instructor had scored a bull’s-eye.