There is another tiger story that I can tell you in two words. It is curious, it sounds highly improbable; but, after hearing it on the spot from the two men concerned, I believe it.
Quite recently it was the fruit season here, and, as is customary, two men were watching an orchard situated on the side of a main cart-road. The orchard was not enclosed in any way, and the fruit trees on one side actually overhung the road. The road was divided from the orchard by a rather wide but quite shallow ditch, that was always dry except during rain. Fifteen or twenty feet on the inside of this ditch was a tiny lean-to under the trees. The shelter consisted of a raised floor of split bamboos, covered by a palm-thatch roof, and a narrow sort of bench, also under the roof, but level with the floor. The bench was next to the high road.
On the night of which I write, one man was sleeping on the bench, the other on the floor of the shelter. It was fine, with a young, early-setting moon; the scattered houses of a considerable village were all round, and there was nothing to fear.
I said before that natives sleep soundly, and you must believe it, or you will never credit my story. About 1 A.M. the man sleeping on the floor of the shelter heard his friend shouting for help. The voice came from the ditch by the road, and thither the man ran, shouting “What is the matter?” “Thieves!” promptly replied the other, but a moment’s conversation dispelled the idea born of his partially-awakened intelligence, and led them to the true interpretation of the riddle. The man in the ditch said then, and says now, that he was asleep, and knew nothing till he suddenly found himself thrown in the ditch, when he awoke and shouted, “Help, thieves!” But, all the same, when he tried to get up, and his friend helped him to the shelter and got a light, it was seen that he had a deep gash in the shoulder, which kept him in hospital for nearly three weeks. The light also showed the track of a tiger up to the bench, thence to the spot in the ditch where the man was lying, and straight across the high road into another orchard. One other thing it showed, and that was a patch of earth on the top of the wounded man’s head.
The friend’s theory, shared by all the neighbours, is this. He points to the exact position in which the sleeper was lying, and how a post, from ground to roof, completely protected the back of his neck, so that the tiger could not seize him as he must have wished to do. Owing to the man’s position, and the way the post of the house and the rails of the bench (for it had a sort of back) ran, the tiger had to take a very awkward grip of his prey, catching him by the shoulder, and therefore carrying him with his head almost on the ground. Three or four steps, a second or two in time, would bring him to the shallow, dry ditch. It was so shallow that he would not jump it, but the in-and-out of a tiger with a kill would be the equivalent of a jump. In he would go easily enough, but the cut slope of the ditch and the slight rise into the road on the other side just saved the man’s life, for the top of his head hit against the edge of the ditch, and, awkwardly held as he was, knocked him out of the tiger’s mouth.
Once dropped, the beast would not return to pick his prey up again, especially with one man shouting and the noise of the other coming to his assistance.
The tiger is the scourge of the land, the crocodile of the water. They seem to be complement and supplement—each of the other: the “golden terror with the ebon bars,” the very embodiment of vitality, sinew, and muscle—of life that is savage and instant to strike—and the stony-eyed, spiky-tailed monster, outwardly a lifeless, motionless log; but, once those pitiless jaws open, it is only a question of what tooth closes on the victim, whether it be “The last chance,” “Tear the shroud,” or “God save your soul.”
I was starting for some hot springs in a remote spot, far in the interior, where I was certain of finding both elephant and rhinoceros, and the second night of my journey I spent at the junction of two large streams. Strolling back from a swim in the river, the local chief told me this pathetic story of fruitless heroism.
The country hereabout is very sparsely peopled, only a few scattered huts breaking the monotony of the virgin forest, Malays and wild tribes the sole inhabitants. Every house is on the bank of a river, and beyond the produce of their rice-fields and orchards the people rely mainly on the water to supply them with food. The Malay is exceedingly cunning in devising various means for catching fish, but what he likes best is to go out in the evening, just at sundown, with a casting-net. Either he wades about by himself, or, with a boy to steer for him, he creeps along in a tiny dug-out, throws his net in the deep pools, and usually dives in after it, to free the meshes from the numerous snags on which they are sure to become entangled.