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In South China, weird legends of men and animals come from the hill people. They find their way to the coast, where their telling often lures men into the back country.

I had followed just such a legend, the story of a "blue" tiger. To me it was not completely credible, although it had been substantiated by friends in both America and China. Still, I told myself as I lay on my camp cot that night, I would never really believe a blue tiger existed until I saw one myself.

My thoughts were suddenly interrupted.

A shriek, like a jagged flash of lightning, tore apart the South China night; then a snarl and the agonized cry of a child. I leaped to my feet. "Good God, Harry, what is it?" Harry Caldwell was already on his feet, jamming cartridges into his rifle. "Tiger, I think. Hurry!"

We ran to a house a hundred yards away. The courtyard swarmed with screaming Chinese. A woman sat on the floor rocking back and forth, tearing handfuls of hair out by the roots. "Ai-ya, ai-ya," she wailed, "my baby. The black tiger. It took my baby. Kill it, Shen-shung;[1] kill the black tiger."

Harry talked rapidly with the terrified natives. "Get lanterns," he shouted. "Come with me."

We dashed out the gate and across the rice dikes followed by a dozen men. Breathlessly, Harry told me what had happened.

"Family eating—baby playing in the court—suddenly the tiger rushed through the door and grabbed the child. He stood for a moment and then leaped over the wall. There's one chance in a thousand he may drop the baby when he sees the lights—but it would be dead—tiger'll head for the big ravine, I'm sure—it's the blue devil—that's where he lives—this makes sixteen for him—sixteen people in two years!"

For a mile we followed a narrow path beside the rice fields. Where the sword grass shut in like a wall on either side, a bloody rag hung on a thorn bush; a few feet beyond lay a tiny baby's shoe. My throat tightened at sight of that pathetic little object.

Caldwell stopped. "No use going farther. The poor little fellow's done for. We'll have to wait until tomorrow."

We turned back to the village but not to sleep. The wailing of the family kept the night alive with the sounds of death. Moreover, our tent was pitched in an orchard and there might be another tiger on the prowl. I couldn't have slept, anyway, so I smoked my pipe until far into the morning, while Harry sat in the tent door, relaxed, but alert and watchful with a .22-caliber Hi Power Savage rifle across his knees. There was plenty of time to talk and think.

I studied Caldwell curiously, for we had only just met after months of correspondence. Six feet tall, spare and hard as a trained athlete, with a flashing smile that seldom left his face in repose, intensely alive, bursting with enthusiasm. That was the man with whom I had come to hunt a strange tiger! A missionary, too, though he didn't resemble any I had ever seen!

It was Captain Thomas Holcomb[2] of the U. S. Marine Corps who first spoke of him to me at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

"He is an amazing man," Tom said. "An effective missionary, a good amateur naturalist, and the finest field rifle shot I've ever seen. I hunted with him. He kills tigers with a .303 Savage rifle. Better get in touch with him if you're going to China; he'd be useful to you and to the Museum."

This was in 1916. I was planning an expedition to the mountains of the Tibetan frontier and Yunnan for the American Museum of Natural History, so I wrote Caldwell at Futsing, China. His reply was vibrant with the personality of the man and told an amazing story.

There was a strange tiger there; not yellow like the ordinary tiger but Maltese blue. Perhaps it was a new species. Why didn't I stop and try to get it on my way to Yunnan?

Letter after letter followed, always full of accounts of the "blue tiger." In spite of what Caldwell said, I didn't believe it was a new species, but rather a melanistic phase of the yellow tiger. Melanism, the opposite of albinism, is an excess of coloring matter in the skin and occurs in many animals. Some, like leopards, squirrels, rabbits, and foxes, are highly susceptible to it; in others, it has never been recorded. A blue, or black, tiger was unknown to the zoological world, but Caldwell's word could not be doubted. Moreover, it was substantiated by a letter from Arthur de C. Sowerby, then representing the Smithsonian Institution as a field naturalist in China. The Museum authorities agreed that the story certainly should be investigated.

After it was decided that I was to stop at Futsing, I talked with Dr. William T. Hornaday, then Director of the New York Zoological Park in the Bronx. "Perhaps," I told him, "I might bring it back alive. When it died, the Museum would get the skin and skeleton anyway. Would you be interested?"

Hornaday smiled. "Would I be interested to have the only blue tiger in the world? Don't ask silly questions! I'll get you a trap if you'll try to use it."

So that was that, and I set off for China and Harry Caldwell. I'll admit to some misgivings about spending weeks in the field with a missionary until I talked again with Tom Holcomb. But he assured me I needn't worry; that Caldwell was a "he man" if there ever was one. He had spent his boyhood in the Tennessee mountains near Chattanooga. "If he wasn't born with a squirrel rifle in his hands," Tom said, "he got hold of one soon after. He decided the thing he most wanted to do was to go to China as a missionary. He has certainly done a wonderful job of that."

On the way down the China coast I heard much more of Caldwell; everyone seemed to know of his exploits. Now they are legends among "old China hands." Bishop Bashford told me how he had opened to Christian teaching a community of a hundred towns and villages, and more than half a million violently anti-foreign Chinese, by killing a man-eating tiger that had been ravaging their village.

That was the entering wedge. Before long other villages had asked his help and his fame spread. But it was not only for the killing of tigers. Because of his reputation for courage, honesty, and fair dealing, he sometimes acted as middleman in settling disputes and once he saved a village from terrible slaughter by going alone to a bandit camp and persuading the chief to take his men back to the hills. The chief had been misinformed, he told them; the money they had demanded to ransom the village was not there, and he offered himself as hostage until his words were proved.

I thought of these things as I sat in the tent looking at Caldwell.

"Harry," I asked, "how did you get your first tiger?"

"It was in the ravine where we're going tomorrow. I killed it with buckshot, but, believe me, I'll never try that again. It was a big tigress and she had eaten a boy the day before. The Elders asked me to rid them of her, but the bearer with my load and rifle hadn't arrived and, like a fool, I went out with only my shotgun. I'd never seen a tiger in the wild, and had no idea how hard they are to kill. It seemed to me that buckshot at close range would be all right.

"I staked a goat on an abandoned terrace and sat down behind some bushes off to one side. The tigress came out almost immediately on a grass-covered dike about a hundred yards away, but she seemed to suspect danger, seeing the goat all alone in that unusual place. For more than an hour she crouched there just like a great tabby cat, sometimes pushing one foot forward as though about to move, but each time drawing it back again. She looked awfully big and I wished I hadn't come, but I couldn't get out except by passing right below her. There was a confounded 'brain fever bird' on a tree above me, and it kept giving that rising, breathless call that drives people crazy. It got on my nerves so I could hardly keep from screaming. Finally, the tigress got up and circled to reach a small path; they'll never attack through unbroken tangle if they can get to a trail. She had to cross a small bare space—it was only about twenty yards—but apparently she didn't like being in the open. She flattened just like a snake, her chin and throat touching the ground, and slithered along with no body motion that I could see except for a quivering of her shoulders and hips. Yet she went awfully fast. As soon as she was in cover again, she made three flying leaps up the narrow terraces toward the goat. The last one brought her face to face with me about twelve feet away. She stood there snarling. Her yellow-and-black head looked big as a haystack, and her eyes simply blazed. I let her have both barrels in the face and neck. I thought the buckshot would be in an almost solid mass at that range and would knock her cold, but she only slipped backward off the terrace and didn't fall. Blood streamed over her head, and she shook it out of her eyes and then slowly walked off into a patch of sword grass. I was scared, for I didn't have any more buckshot cartridges—only No. 4 shot. So I sat tight for half an hour and then worked up the hill through the bush and back to the village.

"The bearer was there with my rifle when I arrived, but it was almost dark and I didn't dare go out that evening. Next day I followed the blood trail with a lot of natives and found her dead nearly half a mile away. Her whole face and neck were full of buckshot but most were flattened against the heavy bones and hadn't penetrated. I think she bled to death.

"When the Chinese brought her back to the village, the mother of the boy she had eaten began beating her with a stick, screaming curses. I kept only the skin for myself, and gave the body to the village elders. Every drop of blood was sopped up with rags which they tied about their necks to ward off disease and personal devils. The meat was sold as medicine. Anyone who ate a small piece was supposed to acquire some of the tiger's courage. The bones, whiskers, and claws they stewed up into a kind of jelly; after it cooled and hardened, it was molded into pills and sold to Chinese druggists in Futsing at a high price. That tigress brought the village nearly four hundred dollars. But shotguns are out for me, I don't mind telling you. That one experience was enough."

"I should think it would be, but," I laughed, "I believe the .22 Hi Power you've got is just about as bad. Both Tom Holcomb and Sowerby said you were a wonderful shot, but it's plain damned foolishness to use that little bullet, if you don't mind my saying so. It hasn't enough weight or shocking power for dangerous game."

Caldwell smiled. "That's what a lot of people say. I killed eight or ten tigers with the .303, and thought it was grand, but the Savage Company sent me out this rifle and the first time I ever fired it was at a tiger. You ought to have seen what that tiny bullet did to him! He was a big tiger, too—a man-eater that had killed several people in this very village. I staked a goat, as usual, but instead of coming out where I thought he would, the tiger appeared on a barren ridge more than a hundred yards away. It was already half-dark, and I couldn't see plainly through the sights, so I walked into the open and moved up. The tiger saw me instantly, of course, and stood there switching his tail with ears laid flat against his head. I expected him to charge at any moment but I had to keep on going until I was close enough to shoot in the bad light. If I had turned back then, he'd have come for me. Finally I was only thirty yards away. It was too dark to pick any vital spot, so I just fired at the body. The beast lunged into the air, twisted, and came down dead as a herring. The bullet had caught him behind the ribs and gone through the stomach. The whole intestines were messed up as though they'd been put through a sausage grinder. I found he had just eaten a dog and the stomach was full of meat."

"Is that the only tiger you've killed with a .22 Hi Power?" I asked.

"Yes, it is; it's the only one I've ever shot at with this rifle, but it's good enough for me. I'll take on any tiger that ever lived with it."

"Well, next time you probably won't be here to tell about it, unless you hit it in the head or neck. You don't realize that you were extraordinarily lucky. You said your bullet went through the stomach and that it was full of dog. To my mind what happened was this; the high-velocity bullet, striking that extended stomach, set up a terrific gas explosion which ruptured the intestines. That was what killed your tiger. I've seen the same thing happen when I've shot woodchucks with a hardnose .22 Hi Power bullet. They just blow up if I get them through the body when the stomach is packed with food; if it is empty, I lose my 'chuck.'"

Caldwell remained unconvinced. "Maybe you're right. But," he grinned, "next time I won't shoot him in the stomach. I'll hit him in the head."

Later I learned that Caldwell did kill other tigers with the .22 Hi Power, but I don't know how many. Even though he once took on five of them with the .303 Savage and killed two, when he had only six cartridges he gave up the .303 and used the .22 Hi Power exclusively. After I had hunted with him for months in China and Mongolia and saw him shoot flying birds with a rifle, I realized he could just about pick the hair on an animal's body that he wanted to split.

"About this blue tiger, Harry! How many times have you seen it?"

"Twice. The first time he wasn't twenty yards from me, but I had only a shotgun. I came on him suddenly, lying right in the path in the sun like a great Maltese cat. While I was watching, he got up slowly and stood for a moment in the trail, then turned around three times. I thought he was going to lie down again, but he stretched, humped his back, and jumped into the bushes. I had a perfect view; could have hit him with a stone. He's really beautiful. The ground color of his body is Maltese, changing into light blue on the lower sides and belly. The stripes are black and well defined, like those on a yellow tiger.

"The second time was last year, and I had him absolutely cold in the sights of my rifle but I didn't dare shoot. I had staked a goat in an open space near the lair, and saw the blue tiger creeping up, but from the other side of the ravine. I was going to fire when I realized he was stalking two boys asleep under an old dike right below him. I didn't know they were there. If I had wounded the beast, he'd have certainly rolled down on the boys. I couldn't chance it, so stood up and yelled. He turned about facing me, snarled, and then walked slowly into the grass."

"I'd certainly like to get him alive for the Zoo," I said. "He'd cause a sensation, but I suppose we'll have to kill him tomorrow. What time will we go out?"

"Not until mid-afternoon. The baby was so small it won't be a big meal for the tiger and by evening he'll be looking for something else—I hope."

When the sun rose in a hot red ball over the hills, and the village stirred to life, Caldwell and I pulled the tent flap and slept till noon. Before three o'clock we were on our way through the rice paddies, dragging two reluctant goats, a mother and her kid. At the entrance to a narrow ravine, Caldwell halted.

"This is where the blue tiger lives and I'll bet he's home. We'll tie the goats in this little open space and get behind those bushes."

"Great Scott, Harry, he'll be almost in our laps when he comes out!"

"Can't be helped. There isn't any other spot. I know this lair like the palm of my hand. There is where I killed my first tiger with the shotgun; right on that terrace."

It was a devilish place; a deep cut in the mountain choked with thorny vines and sword grass. Three or four dark tunnels twisted snakelike back into the murderous growth. "Tiger paths," Caldwell said, laconically. "I crawled up that one on the right for about twenty feet one day. Found a sort of room with bones of all kinds and heaps of pangolin scales; tigers love pangolins. Branch tunnels went off in three directions. Then I realized what a foolish thing I'd done. My hair began to prickle and I backed out in a hurry."

We crouched behind a clump of bushes, half buried in sword grass. Fifteen feet away, the goats blatted incessantly; otherwise there wasn't a sound in the lair. A sweetish stench of rotting flesh drifted out of the tunnel's mouth. It nauseated me; Harry wrinkled his nose in disgust. Breathless, shimmering heat wrapped itself about us like a clinging blanket. For three hours we sat there. I watched the shadows steal slowly down the ravine and reach a lone palm tree on the opposite side. My watch said half past six; that meant another hour of waiting, not more, for night comes swiftly in these South China hills.

Just as I was about to shift my cramped body, I heard the faint crunching sound of a loose stone rolled under a heavy weight. The mother goat bleated in terror, tugging frantically at her rope. Harry's shoulder touched mine. "He's coming," he breathed.

I was half kneeling, my heavy rifle pushed forward. A drop of sweat trickled down my nose, divided, and ran into the corners of my mouth. Another drop started above my left eye and I blinked, frantically. Caldwell sat like a stone Buddha, the stock of his tiny rifle nestled against his cheek. Ten minutes dragged by; it seemed ten hours.

"God," I thought, "why doesn't he come?"

Suddenly, all hell broke loose on the opposite hill. Shouts and yells, beating of pans, stones rolling down the slope. A small army of woodcutters swarmed over the crest on to the trail. The noise was to frighten tigers. They did a good job, for, with a rumbling growl, the blue tiger turned back into the depths of his lair. I got to my feet and stood silently for a long moment just looking at the Chinese; then I let loose. At the end of my spectacular oration, Harry rolled his eyes and pronounced a fervent "amen."

We walked to the tunnel and saw great pug marks at the entrance. "Tigers always wait before coming into the open," Caldwell said, "just like any cat. See how he dug his hind claws into the dirt bracing for a spring! In another minute we'd have had him."

"Do you suppose there is anything left of the child?" I asked. "We ought to take it back to the mother if there is."

"Probably not. Anyway, it would be suicide to go into the lair."

I agreed, regretfully.

"What's our next move?"

"Sit tight until we hear of him again. He operates about three or four villages, here and on the other side of the mountain, but seldom stays more than a day or two in any one place. The natives will let us know as soon as he turns up."

We had to wait only a day when a breathless Chinese arrived at camp from a village four miles away.

"The black tiger came right into the street, and grabbed a dog. He threw it over his shoulder like a sack of rice and ran off to the hills. Everyone followed, yelling and beating pans and just inside the grass, on an old dike, he dropped the dog. It's there; we found it."

Caldwell was electrified. "This time we'll get him alive, Roy. If a tiger hasn't finished his kill he'll always come back after dark and they like dogs better than anything else. We'll set the trap. I'll bet a dollar to a plugged nickel we'll have him in the morning."

We hurried to the village. Dozens of excited men wanted to show us the dog, but Caldwell selected only two and told the others to make a cage of heavy bamboo trunks.

"We'll catch the black tiger for you tonight," he said. "I speak the truth." They looked dubious but examined the trap with enormous interest. I clamped the vises on the springs, screwed them down, and set the trap. Then Wang, Elder of the village, touched the pan with a heavy stick and the jaws snapped shut. Three men tried to pull it out; it wouldn't budge.

"That," the Elder pronounced, "is a good trap. Never has its like been seen in China. It will hold the black tiger, or any other tiger, but," he added slyly, "first he must get in it. I doubt that he ever will."

We found the dog lying beside a tree on a terrace about five feet wide, just above the open rice fields. Its skull was crushed, probably from the first blow of the tiger's paw, but only teeth marks showed on the body. "It couldn't be better," Harry said. We buried the trap on the terrace, and fastened the dog to the tree with heavy wire.

We slept that night in the village. After sunrise at least fifty men, women, and boys accompanied us to the trap, bearing a cage strong enough to hold a gorilla. Harry and I halted the crowd a hundred yards away and approached the terrace, rifles ready. Silence.

"What's wrong, Roy? He ought to be raising Cain."

Foot by foot we crept forward, but not a sound broke the stillness of the jungle. At last we could see the trap. No tiger, and the dog was gone! We stared in dumb amazement.

"It just can't be," Harry said. But it was, all too plainly. The blue tiger had approached from above, as we expected, dropped his forefeet on the terrace, reached over, and lifted our securely wired dog from the tree as though it had been tied with string. Then he had eaten it comfortably on the upper dike a few feet away. The claw marks were within an inch of the trap-pan. Just one inch more and we'd have had him!

The villagers crowded about like a jury to examine the evidence. Collectively they shook their heads and old Wang delivered the verdict.

"Some years ago, Sheng, as you well know, killed his father. He was given the Death of a Thousand Cuts, but nothing was done by our village to atone for his crime. The Gods were offended. Now they have sent this black beast to harass our dwelling place. It is not a 'proper' tiger. No one can trap or kill an Evil Spirit."

Harry and I walked back to camp, saying little. We had "lost face" with the villagers and that was bad. I thought of what a sensation the blue tiger would have caused in New York. To make it worse, a runner waited at the village with a cable from Dr. Hornaday. "How about the blue tiger," it read, "when may we expect him?"

Three days later the tiger killed again seven miles from our camp. It was asleep on a grass-covered terrace when a dozen fuel gatherers disturbed it. The enraged beast leaped to its feet and dashed into the group, striking right and left with its great paws. One man's skull was crushed; another's head ripped half off his shoulders; a third landed ten feet away on a lower dike with a broken neck. Then the tiger jumped to an abandoned terrace, stood for a moment, and turned off into the grass. It made no attempt to drag off any of its victims; apparently the killing was out of sheer bad temper at being disturbed.

When word reached us at three o'clock Caldwell and I almost ran the seven miles. "He's sure to return this afternoon," Harry said. "We've got to get there before he comes."

For two wretched hours we sat in the broiling sun, crouched behind a bush near the terrace where the men had been killed. God, it was hot! The thermometer had registered plus 106 degrees in the shade when we left, and the humidity must have been eighty per cent. I didn't feel at all well. Jagged black patches darted before my eyes and violent nausea doubled me up in uncontrollable spasms of retching and coughing. Every time I went into my act the sounds whacked back like rifle shots in the stillness of the jungle. Of course, that ruined our chance again. Just as night was closing in, the vague outline of the blue tiger showed against a background of feathery bamboo on the opposite slope, but before either of us could shoot, it faded from sight like a black ghost. "The Great Invisible," I remarked, sadly, "that's what he ought to be called."

My heat stroke was a bad one, and for a week I lay in camp under a tree, wracked with fever, headache, and nausea. Finally I had to leave for Hong Kong to outfit for a year's expedition along the Tibetan frontier, but ten days of Caldwell's vacation still remained. He stayed on for another go at the Great Invisible and it very nearly cost him his life. I've set down the story as he told it to me later.

"A few days after you left," he said, "the blue tiger did something I wouldn't have believed possible. It jumped into a cow-pen beside a house, killed a yearling heifer, and leaped out with the dead animal in its mouth. The farmer and his wife saw the whole performance. I measured the fence; it was twelve feet high. My Chinese hunter, Da Da, and I found the remains of the heifer only half eaten about two miles away. The carcass was in a bad place—a very bad place. Four or five trails led to a little open space where the heifer lay in thick jungle and the only way we could see it was by sitting in one of the paths. We didn't dare touch it.

"I said to Da Da, 'I don't like this at all. You know a tiger always moves along a trail if he can. He might come down this one.'

"Da Da looked about. 'But, Shen-shung, with all the wide world, and all these other paths, why should he come this way?'

"I still didn't like it, but there was no other spot. We'd been watching about an hour, and the sun was bright, when I thought I heard the low rumble of thunder. Da Da heard it, too, and we both looked at the sky; there wasn't a cloud. Then the rumble came again and this time it ended in a snarl. The blue tiger was right behind us in the grass! I knew he was close enough to spring, too, else he wouldn't have growled. We couldn't see the beast, but I was sure any sudden move would bring him on us. There was just one thing to do; take him by surprise! All tigers are afraid of the human voice—it's about the only thing they are afraid of. I twisted around very, very slowly and the tiger snarled again. I suppose he didn't spring because he was completely taken aback to find us there. Suddenly I yelled and leaped straight at him, but caught my foot in a vine and sprawled on my face, arms outstretched. This, you'll hardly believe, Roy, but it's true; my left hand actually slapped the tiger on its nose! The beast went right over backward, whirled, and in one jump disappeared in the grass.

"I never was so scared in my life; I couldn't have fired even if I hadn't dropped the rifle. Da Da and I stood there shaking for a time, and then both of us got awfully sick. We could hardly walk back to the village."

That was the last time either Caldwell or I hunted the blue tiger. After his vacation, he went up the Min River to a mission station at Yenping, and although he returned to Futsing from time to time and killed other tigers, he never saw the blue devil again.

But another has recently appeared in the same region. Caldwell returned not long ago to this country and brought with him reports from natives that a giant blue tiger is again terrorizing villagers in the South China hills.

[1] Shen-shung is the Chinese equivalent of Mister.

[2] Lieut. General Thomas Holcomb (Rtd.), Commandant of the U. S. Marine Corps during World War II. Now U. S. Minister to South Africa.