Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 733, January 12, 1878

‘Most things are, I am afraid, at Carbery,’ said Blanche gently. – ‘We have tried to amuse him – have we not, Lucy? – by dragging him with us to such primitive merry-makings as lay within driving distance, archery-meetings, flower-shows’ —

‘Yes, and all manner of Arcadian entertainments of the same species,’ interrupted Jasper, drumming with his ringed fingers on the glass of the open window near which he was standing. ‘I believe I had a narrow escape from what they called a sillabub party at that old woman's (Lady Di Horner's) house at Ottery St Luke's, with a cow on the lawn and the rest of it. The natives, I suppose, like that kind of thing; I don't.’ There was a half-peevish lassitude in his tone, in his attitude, as he spoke, which added emphasis to words that were, if ungracious, perhaps not unkindly meant. But his sisters were not in the least offended that their brother should shew so unaffectedly how little pleasure he took in their society, and how complete was his distaste for their simple pleasures and homely occupations. A grown-up brother is, in the eyes of good girls, a hero by right of birth, and with Lucy and Blanche the captain was a privileged person, not to be judged by the standards of ordinary ethics.

‘If the governor,’ said Jasper, after a pause, ‘would ask people down here – I mean of course after town is empty – a houseful of people of the right sort, why then, one might get through the autumn and winter without being moped to death.’

Lucy shook her head. ‘There is no chance, brother,’ she said, ‘that papa should fill his house with what you would consider people of the right sort. The Vanes will come of course, and the Henshaws, and’ —

‘Never mind the rest of the names,’ broke in the captain with a lazy brusqueness; ‘heavy county members, who know more of the points of a bullock than they do of those of a horse; and their fat wives and starched daughters. What have I done, to be buried alive in this way!’

Women have this merit, that they seldom retort, as they might sometimes do with crushing effect, upon a man who bewails his hard lot, be his self-pity ever so unreasonable. Lucy and Blanche Denzil knew, or guessed, with tolerable accuracy that it was due to Jasper's own extravagance that he no longer wore the gay trappings of a captain of Lancers, and that the soles of his varnished boots were no longer familiar with the Pall-Mall pavement.

‘I'll go in and see my father; he's in the library, I suppose?’ said Jasper, and without waiting for an answer, he sauntered off.

Sir Sykes Denzil was a man of methodical habits, and his son's conjecture that he would be found at that hour in the library was quite warranted, not only by fact, but by his daily practice. On his way thither the young man passed by the suite of drawing-rooms, only the smallest of which was ever used, save on the occasions, not too frequent, when some great dinner-party or possibly a dance at Carbery Chase set all the neighbouring lanes and roads aglow with carriage-lamps. With all its splendour, the Court was what might be described as a dull house; the master of which had never made the most, even for selfish purposes, of his large share in the good things of this world.

The library, Sir Sykes's favourite room, was a stately apartment, with gilt cornices and a richly painted ceiling. It overlooked the stone terrace whereon, amidst statues and marble vases overbrimming with scarlet geraniums, the peacocks strutted. The great central window was of ancient stained glass, and from its quaint panes in their leaden setting flashed forth the lost colours of the blue and crimson, deemed inimitable for centuries past, but which probably owed their peculiar beauty to the corroding touch of time. This window, of which honourable mention was made in the county guide-book aforesaid, glimmered with heraldic blazonry, wherein the couchant greyhounds of the present owners of Carbery found no place.

The baronet, who was seated at his writing-table, strewn with papers, looked up as he heard the opening of the door, and greeted his son with rather a conventional smile of recognition. ‘So you are back with us earlier than usual, Jasper,’ he said, in a tone that was polite, but scarcely cordial. The young man's voice, as usual with him when he addressed his father, had lost much of the languid insolence which habit had rendered natural to him.

‘Yes, sir; I don't care much for cricket, so I did not stay to see the end of it. So far as I could hear, the Zingari were beating the County hollow. But as I said before, that style of thing is not much in my line.’

‘Better for you, my boy, if it had been,’ returned the baronet dryly. ‘A young fellow cannot break his health or ruin his fortunes at cricket, as more fashionable pastimes may help him to do.’

The captain winced and reddened. ‘I didn't expect a lecture, father,’ he said peevishly. ‘Indeed I'm not likely to forget the crasher I came down with, that my misfortunes should be thrown in my teeth every day I live.’

‘We will let the subject drop,’ said the baronet after a momentary pause. ‘Who were at Pebworth to-day? No lack of company, I suppose? Our friends hereabouts are not all as complete cosmopolitans as you are, Jasper; and some of the ladies at anyrate may have gone there in hopes of seeing Devon win the game.’

Jasper half sullenly made answer that he could scarcely say who were there. ‘Fulfords and Courtenays and the Carews, and the people from Prideaux Park, yes; and the De Vere girls, and Harrogate their brother. The old Earl wasn't there, and the ladies went on horseback.’

‘Lady Gladys looks well on horseback,’ observed Sir Sykes with a sidelong glance at his son.

‘Yes; and rides nicely,’ answered Jasper with an air of the most utter indifference; and then the eyes of the father and the son met, not frankly, but as the eyes of two wary fencing-masters might do at the instant of crossing swords. Sir Sykes and Jasper were not, so far as outward seeming went, in the least alike. The common attribute of worldliness they did indeed share, but neither in looks nor in manner did they resemble each other. The baronet was a tall and handsome man, whose dark hair was now dashed with gray, and his high forehead deeply lined, but who still presented to the eyes of the world a showy exterior and a bearing that was at once dignified and urbane. That he was not in perfect health could only be conjectured from the slowness of his step, and those faintly marked furrows near the corners of the shapely mouth, in which a shrewd physician might have read of mischief silently at work; but to unprofessional scrutiny he appeared simply as a gentleman of a goodly presence.

A melancholy man, albeit a proud and a courteous one, Sir Sykes was known to be. And singularly enough, the baronet's sadness was supposed to date from the day when he had lost, long years ago, the eldest of his three daughters, a little girl to whom he was rumoured to have been unusually attached. This was the odder, because Sir Sykes was not the sort of man who is generally credited with very deep feelings or a peculiar strength of family affection. He had borne his wife's decease with polished equanimity; but those who had known him in his early poverty and in his subsequent prosperity averred that the lord of Carbery had never been the same man since the death of this child.

‘I wish,’ said Sir Sykes, speaking slowly, and poising a gold-hafted paper-knife between his soft white fingers – ‘I wish I could see you married and settled.’

‘The settling, if, as I suppose, it means the making of a suitable settlement, makes the main impediment to marrying, with some of us at least,’ rejoined Jasper with mock gravity; but before his father could reply, a servant entered bringing a letter. Sir Sykes mechanically took up the letter from the silver tray and as mechanically opened it. But his eyes had hardly glanced at the first half-page before a great and sudden change came over his calm face; he grew white, almost livid, to his very lips, and let his hand which held the open letter drop heavily upon the table.

‘Are you ill, sir?’ said Jasper quickly and with a sort of anxiety unusual with him. It was impossible to avoid taking notice of the baronet's very evident emotion; impossible too not to connect the cause of it with the letter which Sir Sykes held in his hand. But the master of Carbery Chase rallied himself, and though his face was even ghastly in its pallor and his breath came painfully, he managed to smile as he rejoined: ‘Not ill. It is a mere pain, a spasm at most, which comes at times, but goes as quickly, or nearly so, as it comes. It is a trifle, not worth the talking about. It is getting late, and I have a note or two to write and some papers to look over before the dressing-bell rings. We shall meet at dinner presently.’

Jasper rose to go. ‘I hardly like’ – he began.

‘I am better; I am well; it is nothing,’ interrupted Sir Sykes irritably; and then blandly added: ‘I thank you, my dear boy, for your solicitude, but I am best alone.’

Jasper had not proceeded two paces along the carpeted corridor before he heard the key of the library door turned from within.

‘I'd give a cool hundred,’ said this exemplary youth, ‘to look over my father's shoulder as he reads that letter. To have a hold on the governor would’ – He left the rest of the sentence unspoken, and passed on, leaving Sir Sykes in the locked-up library to the company of his own solitary thoughts.

TIGER-SHOOTING

Tiger-shooting in India differs a trifle from the tame pursuit of game in England – a very different thing indeed from the miserable amusement of the battue, in which hundreds of defenceless creatures are shot down without any chance of danger to the shooter. To go out tiger-shooting is to run the risk of encountering a deadly enemy, which on grounds of public policy it is of importance to destroy. So much as a preliminary observation.

The danger connected with tiger-shooting varies very much in proportion to the conditions under which it is prosecuted. Thus a man on foot following the fresh tracks of a tiger up to his lair, and shooting him as he lies, or following him up on foot when wounded, incurs the maximum risk. In all cases, after being wounded, ungovernable fury and a fierce longing for revenge take the place of that instinctive fear or shyness of man which tigers share with all other wild animals. This instinctive dread of man is so well known to the tribes who inhabit the forests of India, that even solitary individuals will hail the prospect of suddenly encountering a tiger, provided, of course, that he is not a man-eater. They know their safety at such a moment lies in preserving a composed attitude and demeanour. The tiger will often yield the right of way; but if the human subject finds it necessary to set that example in the way of politeness, he knows it to be absolutely essential to the preservation of his life that he should do so with every appearance of self-possession, and without any signs of fear or precipitancy. A passage in King Richard III. accurately reflects the line of conduct which should be observed, holding good as it does equally with reference to the tiger:

To fly the boar, before the boar pursues,Were to incense the boar to follow us,And make pursuit where he did mean no chase.

In proportion to the successful days, the number of blank days in tiger-shooting is extraordinarily large, as the experience of most shikarees will confirm. This is owing to ‘hanks’ or beats being so often badly planned or mismanaged; through which tigers escape which might otherwise have easily been brought to book. The dry and denuded state of an Indian jungle during the hot weather makes that the most fitting season for tiger-shooting. Indeed it is the only season in which the sport can be undertaken with a reasonable prospect of success. The available covers for a tiger are then much reduced in number and extent; and in the inverse ratio are the chances increased of the animal's not betaking himself to some distant locality before the plan of action which is intended to effect his destruction has had time to develop itself. In other words, any faint and accidental signs of a disturbance in a tiger's vicinity will rouse him from his lair, and drive him to green patch or snug retreat miles away, if the weather be cool and cover abundant; whereas with very hot weather and extensive denudation of shade, he will prefer remaining where he is until the sounds assume too decided a character to be mistaken; when the probabilities are that the sportsman will be perfectly ready on his making a move.

The great point to remember in arranging to hunt a tiger is that one of his most prominent characteristics is cunning – and that this must be met by cunning. This is not sufficiently studied, especially by beginners. Eager and enthusiastic for the fray, and for the thrill of satisfaction which the all-important moment of the actual kill inspires, the inexperienced sportsman is too apt to overlook those precautions and preparations which are essential aids to success; or he relies upon others for doing in the above respects what he should attend to himself. The first thing to be done on arriving at the ground where a tiger has safely been marked down by the early despatched scouts is to acquaint one's self thoroughly with its topography. The nature of the ground varies very much; consisting sometimes of a pile of rocks rising from a plain, of a confused mass of hills, or of a large single hill, a river or small water-course stocked with green bushes, and with level jungle or perhaps open ground bordering on both sides; and so on. On being roused from his lair in say a water-course by the beaters, a tiger is very likely to cross over into the jungle, especially if another ravine is not far off to which he can retire. He does so with the express object of getting rid of his disturbers as soon as possible; or let us say that instinct tells him that an entire change of locality is most conducive to his safety. On the other hand, if there be no adjoining cover, a tiger will keep to the same channel and steal along its course. The difference between the two cases represents the comparative prospect of a tiger being bagged. When a tiger is compelled to steal along the channel from which he has been roused, the prospect becomes nearly a certainty, assuming the ‘hank’ to be conducted in a correct manner.

A very slight noise, such as slight coughing, will sometimes start a tiger; while he will at other times refuse to move, although even shots should be fired into the bush or among the rocks where he may be lying concealed. As Colonel Rice, late of the Bombay army, very justly remarks in his book entitled Tiger-shooting in India– and the writer's own experience is entirely corroborative of that statement – no two tigers can be depended on for behaving exactly alike under the same circumstances. An old tiger, and especially one which has been hunted before, is extremely wary, and very difficult to circumvent with even good management; while a young one readily falls a victim, like any other greenhorn. A tigress with young cubs is always very savage, and will sometimes charge anybody approaching her den or other resting-place before her own presence is at all suspected. Three men in the service of the writer were once obliged to take refuge on a rock only some six or seven feet high, where an angry tigress bayed them, and repeatedly threatened to charge home for at least two hours. One of the men was armed with a sword, and the other two had nothing but sticks in their hands. The tigress crouched at the very foot of the rock, which was small but flat-topped, over and over again. She there alternately blinked and glared at the unfortunate men, who only succeeded in keeping her off from actually springing on them by dint of vigorous and incessant shouting, and constantly changing front, according as the tigress herself kept moving from one side of the rock to another, and occasionally retiring a few paces, and then stealing forward and crouching again. The state of their throats and the terribly husky whisper to which their voices were in the end reduced, may easily be imagined. However, down to their humblest followers, hunters as a rule are a merry set, and directly actual danger has passed away the danger is forgotten.

In large covers there are often outlets and lines of exit, in addition to those guarded by a party of say four or five sportsmen, who post themselves at the most important points. These all require to be blocked up, so that a tiger, should he attempt to escape by any of them, may be readily turned on to a path which will draw him under fire. One of the covers in which the writer was fortunate enough to bag several tigers in different years, consisted of a river of about a hundred and fifty yards width, with ravines branching out at different points, and low hills bordering the banks. It was impracticable with fewer than a hundred men, and was best driven by elephants, in consequence of the thick and tangled state of the bushes. It was a piece of ground of the kind described above, offering numerous outlets, as the cover extended right under one of the banks, and ran for some distance along the length of the river; while the bank itself was of no great height, and might be ascended in a moment at any point. The method of blocking up the outlets which the sportsmen themselves cannot watch, is to place over them, on trees, the sharpest and most intelligent of the men that can be selected from among the beaters. They should be instructed to strike the tree with a stone taken up in the hand for that purpose, or to employ any other simple process of producing a noise, so that the tiger may be headed back the moment he is seen to be advancing, and his intention is unmistakable. A blank shot will be necessary to turn a rapidly advancing tiger; and a matchlock or spare gun in the hands of a competent person should in such cases be kept in reserve. Many of the rivers in India during the hunting season are perfectly dry beds, except as to a mere rill or narrow stream. The actual water's edge is, however, almost sure to be the tiger's position, if fringed by bushes sufficiently large to afford him shelter; for he delights in lapping the water frequently, and in laving his limbs during the hottest hours of the day.

With respect to the height a tiger will clear at a bound or series of bounds, some uncertainty seems to prevail. In Captain Shakspeare's Wild Sports of India, the author, when twelve feet up a tree, scarcely thought himself beyond the reach of the man-eater he was expecting, as he believed a tiger capable of springing over that height. In the book of Colonel Gordon Gumming (a brother of the African hunter), a sad case is recorded of his gun-bearer being pulled out of a tree and killed by a wounded tiger through incautiously standing only some eight feet above the ground. But points of this nature are altogether of a secondary character, the slightest vantage-ground being sufficient if the requisites are preserved of a cool head and steady hand to guide the management of an efficient weapon.

To the generality of tastes, the most satisfactory method of hunting tigers is with and upon a well-trained elephant. But when the arrangements are on a very extensive scale, they fail of anything like due effect. On special occasions, elephants have been employed in the hunting-field by the score, and also by the hundred, as in the case of the Prince of Wales's excursions in Nepaul. A cordon of eight hundred elephants was then employed to inclose a jungle and to drive the game on to a central point; but the bag, though good, was disproportionately small, looking to the means and labour employed. Better results might have been obtained if the ground had been traversed in sections with only a few elephants, though this would have required more time, which probably could not be spared. The great object to be kept in view in approaching a tiger for the purpose of obtaining a fair shot, is to do as little as possible towards startling the beast until within a few yards, even though obstructions such as bushes or rocks intervene; for when once a ‘scare’ is excited, a tiger will break through an inclosing line of elephants and probably escape altogether; whereas by being quietly followed up with scouts previously sent forward to note and telegraph his progress, the chances are all in favour of the sportsman.

In hilly tracts where the hills run in long ridges and are flanked or intersected by ravines, as in Rajpootana, tiger-shooting may at all times be conducted on foot with comparative safety. This was successfully done by Colonel (then Lieutenant) Rice from twenty to twenty-five years back. He never once employed an elephant, and treats the notion of doing so with a certain amount of disdain. Confessing to a desire to employ his rifle on the tigers in the island of Singapore, which is (or certainly was) very much infested by them, he remarks: ‘There the old notion prevails that without elephants tigers are best let alone.’ Evidently the Colonel does not consider the elephant a necessary adjunct to the sport, nor did he really find it so. There can, however, be no question that in large swamps and grass tracts, and in fact under all circumstances, an elephant is a most powerful auxiliary, whose importance cannot be over-rated. If trees and such positions are taken to meet the tiger when he first breaks, the advantage of afterwards following him up on an elephant if only wounded, is too obvious to need any comment. But it is of course absolutely necessary that the elephant should be one which can be depended on for making a firm stand before a tiger. The more steady the elephant, the better the aim that can be taken; but the uninitiated should know that there is always some slight oscillatory movement in an elephant, so that a small though perhaps an infinitesimal measure of calculation has to be applied in shooting from its back. From a neglect of this necessity, tigers are sometimes missed at absurdly close quarters, though there may be no actual change in the elephant's position to account for the circumstance, and to justify the miss. On the other hand, as sometimes happens, an elephant may very seriously incommode or perhaps precipitate his rider to the ground, by actually charging a tiger and dropping down on his knees, in order the better to crush the foe. At the same time, an elephant that bolts jeopardises his rider's life in a worse degree, by the reckless manner in which he pursues his flight. Should the jungle consist of trees, there is almost a certainty of the howdah being dashed up against them, or of its being swept off by some projecting bough, which affords a clear passage to the body of the elephant, but not to the howdah and those seated in it. The latter, therefore, run a serious risk of being badly injured or of losing their lives.

One important essential for the obtaining of sport is a liberal expenditure of money. It both sweetens labour and smooths the path to danger. To keep an elephant in prime hearty condition costs about fifteen pounds a month, and good elephants may occasionally be borrowed from native chiefs through the instrumentality of political officers; but unless one has influence enough to insure his being thus favoured, he should make up his mind to hunt on foot. Many men have done, and still do so with the most satisfactory results; while with respect to elephants, some special elements of risk exist, which prove fatal entirely from a want of common forethought. Thus, an unfortunate officer of one of Her Majesty's regiments serving in India ventured into a jungle after a tiger, seated merely on the pad on which a howdah is made to rest; he was thrown off, and fell into the jaws of the enraged beast. A person seated in this manner is at any moment liable to be thrown by a sudden swerve, and such an occurrence is extremely likely when a tiger charges, or suddenly appears before an elephant. The writer remembers an instance within his own experience of being mounted on an elephant off whose back at least a hundred tigers had at various times been killed, and which was therefore generally very staunch, and of there being a second and third elephant on each side of the first; yet on a panther very little bigger than a large cat charging from a bush, the three elephants together turned in an instant and ignominiously retreated for about a dozen yards. The shock of the movement was so great that he was forced back on the seat from which he had just risen the moment before, and must have infallibly been hurled to the ground had he been seated on a pad only. It should therefore be adopted as a rule never to be deviated from, that a tiger should not be approached on an elephant otherwise than in a properly constructed howdah.