As I approached the village in company with the headman, I heard the wailing of a woman mourning her dead. It was the mother of the victim and she was the first to greet me when I arrived in the village. Even to my unpracticed eye it was apparent that the bereaved mother had just weathered one hysterical storm and was heading for another, and as I lack the lack the art of dealing with people in this condition, I was anxious to spare the woman a recital of the events of the previous evening. When appeared to be eager to give me her version of the story, however, so I let her have her way.
As her story unfolded, it was apparent that her object in telling it was to ventilate her grievance against the men of the village for not having run after the leopard and rescued her son, ‘as his father would have done had he been alive.’ In her accusation against the men, I told her she was unjust, and in her belief that her son could have been rescued alive, I told her she was wrong. For when the leopard clamped his teeth round the boy’s throat, they dislocated the head from the neck and the boy was already dead before the leopard carried him across the courtyard. Nothing the assembled men – or anyone else – could have done would have been of any use.
Standing in the courtyard, drinking the tea that had so thoughtfully been provided for me, and nothing the hundred or more people who were gathered round, I found it difficult or conceive how an animal the size of a leopard had crossed the courtyard in daylight without being seen by any of the people who must have been moving about at that time, or how its presence had gone undetected b the dogs in the village.
Climbing over the eight foot wall down which the leopard carrying the boy had jumped, I followed the ‘drag’ across the yam field, down another wall twelve feet high, and across another field. At the edge of this second field there was a thick hedge of this second field there was a thick hedge of rambler roses four feet high. Here the leopard had released his hold on the boy’s throat and, after searching for an opening in the hedge – and not finding one – had picked the victim up by the small of the back and, leaping the hedge, gone down a wall en feet high on the far side. There was a cattle track at the foot of this third wall, and the leopard had only gone a short distance alone it when the alarm was raised in the village. Dropping the boy on the cattle track, the leopard went down the hill and was prevented from returning to his kill by the beating of drums and the firing of funds, which had gone on in the village all night.
The obvious thing for me to have done would have been to carry the body of the boy back where the leopard had left it, and to have sat over it there. But here I was faced with two difficulties – the absence of a suitable place in which to sit, and my aversion to sitting in an unsuitable place.
The nearest tree, a leafless, walnut, was 300 yards away and was therefore out of the question and, quite frankly, I lacked the courage to sit on the ground. I had arrived at the village at sundown; it had taken a little time to drink the tea hear the mother’s story, and trail the leopard, and there was not sufficient daylight left for me to construct a shelter that would have given me even the semblance of protection. If I sat on the ground, I should have to sit just anywhere, not knowing full well that if the leopard attacked me I would get no opportunity of using the one weapon with which I was familiar my rifle; for when in actual contact with an unwounded leopard or tiger, it is not possible to use fire-arms.
After my tour of inspection I returned to the courtyard and asked the headman for a crowbar, a stout wooden peg, a hammer, and a dog chain. With the crowbar I prized up one of the flagstones in the middle of the courtyard, drove the peg firmly into the ground, and fastened one end of the chain to it. Then with the help of the headman I carried the body of the boy to the peg, and chained it there.
Before prizing up the flagstone, I had asked that the mother and her daughter be removed to a room at the very end of the row of buildings. When this had been done and my preparations completed, I washed at the spring and asked for a bundle of straw, which I laid on the veranda in front of the door of the house vacated by the mother.
Darkness had now fallen. Having asked the assembled people to be as silent during the night as it was possible for them to be, I sent them to their respective homes and took up position on the veranda, where, by lying on my side and heaping a little straw in front of me, I had a clear view of the kill without there being much chance of my being seen myself.
In spite of all the noise that had been made the previous night, I had a feeling that the leopard would return, and that when he failed to find his kill where he had left it he would come to the village to try and secure another victim. The ease with which he had secured his first victim at Bhainswara would encourage him to try again, and I started my vigil with high hopes.
Heavy clouds had been gathering all the evening, and at 8 p.m. When all the village sound – except the wailing of the woman – were hushed, a flash of lightning followed by a distant roll of thunder heralded an approaching storm. For an hour the storm raged, the lightning being so continuous and brilliant that had a rat ventured into the courtyard I should have seen it, and probably been able to shoot it. The rain eventually stopped but the sky remained overcast, reducing visibility to a few inches. The time had now come for the leopard to start from wherever he had been sheltering from the storm, and the time of his arrival would depend on the distance of that place form the village.
The woman now stopped wailing, and in all the world there appeared to be no sound. This was as I had hoped it would be, for all I had to warn me of the leopard’s arrival were my ears, and to help them I had used the dog chain instead of a rope.
The straw that had been provided for me was as dry as tinder, and my ears, straining into the black darkness, first heard the sound when it was level with my feet – something was creeping, very stealthily creeping, over the straw on which I was lying. I was wearing an article of clothing called shorts which left my legs bare in the region of my knees. Presently, against this bare skin, I felt the hairy coat of an animal brushing – it could only be the man-eater, creeping up until he could lean over and get a grip of my throat. A little pressure now on my left shoulder – to get a foothold – and then, just as I was about to press the trigger of the rifle to cause a diversion, a small animal jumped down between my arms and my chest. It was a little kitten, soaking wet that had been caught out in the storm and, finding every door shut, had come to me for warmth and protection.
The kitten had hardly made itself comfortable inside my coat and I was just beginning to recover from the fright it had given me, when from beyond the terraced fields there was some low growling, which gradually grew louder. Then it merged into the most savage fight I have ever heard. Quite evidently the man-enter had left his kill, and while he was searching for it, in not too good a temper, another male leopard, who looked upon this particular area as his hunting ground, and accidentally come across him and set on his. Fights of the nature of the one that was taking place in my hearing are very unusual, for carnivore invariably keep to their own areas, and if by chance two of a sex happen to meet, they size up each other’s capabilities at a glance, and the weaker gives way to the stronger.
The man-eater, though old, was a big and very powerful male and in the 500 square miles he ranged over there was possibly no other male capable of disputing his rule. But here at Bhainsware he was a stranger and a trespasser and, to feet out of the trouble he had brought on himself, he would have to fight for his life. And this he was undoubtedly doing.
My chance of getting a shot had now gone, for even if the man-eater succeeded in defeating his attacker, his injuries would probably prevent him from taking any interest in kills for some time to come. There was even a possibility of the fight’s ending fatally for him, and here would indeed be an unexpected end to his career, killed in an accidental encounter by one of his own kind, when the combined efforts of the Government and the public had failed, over a period of eight years, to accomplish this end.
The first round, lasting about five minutes, was fought with unabating savagery, and was inconclusive, for at the end of it I could still hear both animals. After an interval of ten or fifteen minutes, the fight was resumed, but at a distance of two to three yards from where it had originally started; quite evidently the local champion was getting the better of the fight and was gradually driving the intruder out of the ring. The third round was shorter that the two that had preceded it, but was no less savage; and when after another long period of silence the fight was aging resumed, it had receded to the shoulder of the hill, where, after a few minutes, it died out of hearing.
There was still some six hours of darkness left. Even so, I knew my mission to Bhainsware had failed, and my hope that the fight would be fought to a finish and would end in the death of the man-eater had been short-lived. In the running fight the contest had now degenerated into, the man-eater would sustain injuries, but they were not likely to reduce his craving for human flesh, or impair his ability to secure it.
By
Jim Corbett
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