The leopard, if not the boldest of all the feline tribes, is at least the best acquainted with mankind. His partiality for dogs makes him familiar with men’s villages. More than any other beast, perhaps, he is prompt to turn at bay when wounded and “charge home.” Many a man has lost his life to a wounded leopard. Yet even a leopard is daunted by the sound of humanity.
In 1888 a big one was seen in a large village, not far from Maulmain, one morning. The scattered wooden houses and plentiful shrubs afforded cover. He was merely looking for a dog, and the people said he had repeatedly taken one unnoticed. But this morning a woman saw him and shrieked. The other women shrieked responsive, the children screamed, the dogs barked, and, amid the deafening uproar, the men of the village, and some chance visitors who happened to have guns, concerted measures, partly by dumb show, being [68] scarcely able to make themselves audible to each other.
As soon as the men had obtained silence on one side of the clump of brushwood, wherein Mr. Spots was waiting for the clamour to subside, and the men began yelling on the other sides of it, the leopard stepped cautiously into the open on the silent quarter, looking like a detected thief, preparing to run, with his tail between his legs, like a dog that feels he is about to be kicked and deserves it. On seeing an unexpected man in front of him, the leopard shrank aside, apologetically, as if abashed. The man killed it. A sense of what he owed to the other men prevented him allowing it to escape; and so he fired. But it was “against the grain.” He felt like slaying a man who had asked for quarter; but, after all, no quarter is ever expected or given on either side in humanity’s protracted war with dangerous cats.
In this case the leopard heard no shot until the shot was fired that killed it. It was cowed by the cries. So we need not wonder that the tiger, which is more sylvan in habit and less used to human noises, can be “beaten” out of shelter by the shouting of men and boys. When the tiger breaks out and kills a beater it is not because it [69] has found the heart to face the yelling crowd, but because it is desperate.
We should remember that leopards and tigers love peace as much as do the Quakers. There is no jingo nonsense about them. They never want to fight, and absolutely will not fight unless they have to. Their single aim is to get their dinners, which, as Bismarck reminded a deputation, is the first business of every living being. “Good” or “bad” depends on the way of doing it, he might have added. The war between cats and us is not due to their malignant hostility, but to their physiological necessities. If we were content to let them prey upon us there would be peace. On other terms there can be none. A compromise is impossible. What had to be settled, when the first Hercules took up his club, was whether the world was to be filled by men or cats. It is now some millenniums since the ultimate issue became obvious; but the end is not reached yet.
Of course it is not altogether an aversion to fighting that makes the tiger seek for peace at any price when men surround him. Try for a moment to think in the skin of a tiger. The little jungle dogs are formidable to him, as he is an individualist, and they run in packs. They kill the big deer before his nose, including some he has to [70] leave alone. But what is the union of the dogs compared to the solidarity of men, who “have pity upon one another,” as Mahomed noticed? And think again, what a puny thing is a tiger’s tooth or claw compared to a big knife!
True it is that when a tiger finds a man unready and alone, he can kill him as easily as a man can kill a chicken. But in the course of ages he has acquired an instinctive horror of men, weak as they are, such as men, in turn, have of snakes. The unknown seems infinite, to tigers as to men. A dog has its teeth, a deer or bull its horns; but when a crowd of men are coming at him with a noise like a cyclone, a tiger cannot tell what to expect. So, even if you were a tiger, with a man’s intellect to illumine the aspect of things in general, you would often feel along with it that the better part of valour is discretion.
It is not easy to think in the skin of a tiger. It is easier to realise the effect of the sound of humanity upon a tiger’s nerves by watching him and the beaters. The matter is not one upon which there is any difference of opinion possible. This said, nothing perhaps could make the truth so palpable to happy stay-at-homes as a reminiscence I recently heard from a brave European officer who has had experience as a hunter.
[71] For obvious reasons I will omit details that might enable others to identify him against his will. Suffice it to say, the scene was “in darkest Burma,” and the time about the end of the nineteenth century.
“You know,” said he, “the noise that the tiger makes in going through kaing grass.”
But readers in general cannot know that. So it may be explained. In the woods the tiger glides gently, and steps unheard upon dry leaves a man could not touch without a noise. He realises the ideal of good children—to be seen without being heard. It is not that he likes to be seen. He is of a retiring disposition, and prefers to be unnoticed so much so that even if you frequent his haunts you are not likely to see him more than once or twice in a lifetime, though you may comfort yourself—if it is a comfort—by reflecting that he doubtless sees you oftener. He may be a neighbour of yours all his life; as a cub, he may be fed upon your cattle, and, as a grown-up tiger, help himself to the same, without once showing his face or letting you hear his stealthy step. He comes and goes like a thief in the night, and if by rarest chance he walks by day it is on silent pads more noiseless than the best of rubber tyres. But the kaing grass reeds in swampy parts [72] of Burma grow thick and high. They are seldom less than a man’s height, and sometimes so high as to overtop a man on horseback, and too thick for a dog to get through. When the tiger is hunting there he has to lie in wait by the sides of the paths. I hesitate to believe what is sometimes said—that he never is noiseless in the kaing—but the evidence is overwhelming that he often goes through it “as loudly as a cart,” say some who have heard him, as they waited for him over a kill, or, in one instance, over a calf tied up as a bait.
“The noise is not the same as a cart’s, only as loud. It seems to be unmistakable if once you have heard it,” said the hunter, whose experience is to be told. “There is a crackling swish—swish, as he crumples up the reeds at every stride. Think of my feelings when I heard it again coming at me as I was walking back to camp along the narrow footpath, with the reeds towering above me, as if shutting out all help, to hide you and drown your voice. Oh, my God!” The man was speaking years afterwards, and shuddered still. “It made me feel queer, I tell you,” he went on. “I was paralysed till I remembered what to do. Then didn’t I howl, ‘Thank God!’ and yell! and swear! Somehow you don’t recall, [73] at such a time, what you say at church. The tiger might have digested me before I could have repeated a prayer. But every particle of profanity, English, Burmese and Hindustani, that ever was in my head came out then with a howl. I didn’t care what it was if it made a noise.”
The curious listener, on history intent, tried to refresh his memory by leading questions, but he positively blushed at the recollection, and was as shy as a girl. He proceeded:
“I kept it up, you know—I had to, although I heard the sound draw back a little. It’s no joke to have to bluff a tiger in the kaing grass and in the dark, when you cannot see but know he can, and may have his eye upon you. I never stopped the noise. I felt he might spring upon me if it slacked for a second. And when I could not think of any other oath I struck up singing. …” And, in short, he emerged from the darkness into the flickering glare of the camp-fire, yelling “Rule, Brittania!” much louder than he ever sang before.