They were only two men, and one of them was old, and they had no weapons but the big knives they had been using. But instantly they flourished their knives and moved forward, shouting [60] and yelling as if they were the advance guard of an army of men.
The tiger, a big animal in the prime of life, looked up at them in deliberate surprise, and visibly hesitated. Then, as they approached, he moved aside, slowly and reluctantly, into cover, as if to watch what was going to happen and consider what to do.
The two men ran forward, snatched up the corpse and started for the boat, looking round continually, brandishing their knives and shouting, and seeing, or thinking they saw, those great eyes glaring at them through the bushes. They said they even heard the tiger following. Perhaps they did. Time after time they thought it was about to spring upon them, and faced towards the sound, real or imaginary, with knives uplifted and loud shouts of defiance. They reached the boat and got on board, but did not take time to loose the rope. They cut it and pushed off.
Next morning the elder of the two took Major Nethersole and another officer to the place, and there they saw the severed rope and the tracks of the tiger patrolling on the muddy banks. The tides had been such that the tracks must have been made after the men departed, and left no room for doubt that the tiger had come after them [61] to the water’s edge, and there lingered long, going up and down as if in a cage, and looking across the waters on which the men had disappeared.
It was several days before the son of Po An and his old friend discovered, as their excitement abated, how badly their nerves had been shaken. Their sleep began to be broken by hideous dreams.
That was more than three months ago. The tiger is dead now (April 1909). His skull and hide can be seen at Pyapon. But still, I believe, though now at greater and greater intervals, sometimes the one and sometimes the other of the two brave men is wakened by the nightmare of those awful eyes, and shrieks and shrieks to his neighbours to come and stay beside him.
VIII [62] THE INSPECTOR’S ESCAPE
It was about February 1891, and on the left or eastern bank of the Sittang River in Toungoo district, Lower Burma, that an inspector of police was riding northwards along a cart-road, through the woods, as the daylight was quitting the sky, and “suddenly,” to use his own words, “I seemed, at one and the same instant, to get a terrific blow in the small of the back, and to feel the pony under me springing upwards, as if it were jumping to the sky.” He completed his description by gestures.
A listener suggested, “As if it were suddenly galloping up a wall?”
“Quite so,” said he. “The next I felt was that I seemed to fall back upon something soft, and that’s all I know. The next I saw was the people bending over me, and I could hear one say to another, ‘He’s not dead yet,’ and others said, ‘He’s dead,’ but none of them touched me, and I tried to speak, but could [63] not. Then after a long time somebody saw I was breathing, and somebody put something under my head, and … I am not hurt, so far as I am aware,” concluded the inspector, “but feel stunned and queer, and horribly helpless.”
The villagers said, “We saw the pony come galloping with an empty saddle along the road which goes through the village, and in the middle of the village it stopped short and made a noise. It was quivering. Its hind-quarters were bleeding from great tiger’s claw-marks as you see them yet.”
The poor beast was still sore from the scratches a month afterwards. Whether it ever recovered I never heard.
With a celerity and courage characteristic of the unspoiled Burman, every man in the village soon had a da (big knife) or home-made spear in his hand, and many had torches or lamps as well. But while they thus prepared for action promptly, it has to be noted that there was a certain hesitation about starting. Some objected. Why? The pony had been recognised as the inspector’s. He was rather popular than otherwise, but he was a policeman. No Burman could say with truth that he thought it right [64] to save the life of a policeman. Even the older men, who were addicted to religion, could only say, “He’s a man, after all.” Equally with the rest they believed that any policeman in the pay of the English is irretrievably doomed to hell, and has deserved to be. But, what made the pious elders on this occasion more readily silent than they might otherwise have been, there were several who delivered themselves of sentiments that might be translated by a verse of an old English ballad:—
“Saddled and bridled
And booted rade he;
Toom hame (empty home) cam’ the saddle,
But never cam’ he!”
“It’s not a man that you’re going to save. You’re likely to be late for that! It’s a corpse you’re going to take from a tiger.”
This was conclusive. The most scrupulous Burman can risk his life with a clear conscience in fighting a tiger to recover a corpse. So the crowd set out.
Great was their wonder to find the inspector prostrate upon the road, unconscious, but unscratched. When they had heard his story they said to me—
“The tiger cannot have seen him at all. [65] Lying in wait here, it must have seen only his piebald pony, and, leaping so as to land on its shoulders, it must have knocked its nose severely against the man’s back and slipped down. Then he fell upon it, and so perplexed it more than ever, and it would step aside into cover to consider awhile.”
Perhaps the shrewdest remark made on the incident was this: “When struck on the back, the man must have let out a howl. That would frighten the tiger!” The inspector did not remember that, but could not be expected to remember it. He would do it without thinking.
It was his own and the general opinion that if help had not come, as it did, the tiger would have come back; and, humanity mastering prejudice, the people said, “We are glad we came.”
The fright made him talk of leaving the police and leading a new life. But his salary was good. He was like the rich man in Scripture, who had great possessions. The villagers did not blame him for changing his mind and not resigning. It was as much in earnest as in jest that they said, “He may become religious, when he takes his pension.”
About the same time as this wonderful escape, a lonely leper who lived in a hut, like a hermit, on [66] the opposite side of the river, disappeared for ever, and the few bloody rags that were left and the tell-tale footprints showed that the tiger had come upon him, like a thief in the night, and carried him bodily away.
“We are very sorry for the leper,” said the villagers to the inspector, when he next rode by, and the fate of the leper was discussed. “We are very sorry for the leper, and for the tiger too. Either your pony or yourself would have been more wholesome eating.”