SPORT IN THE JUNGLE

Evening Star, Issue 21077, 14 April 1932, Page 5

SPORT IN THE JUNGLE

TIGER AND HUNTER IN EARTHQUAKE CORNERED BY ROGUE ELEPHANT Sitting on a wooden “ machan,” or platform, halfway np a tree in the middle of a jungle waiting for a tiger to return to its hidden kill must be an uncanny experience at the best of times. But suppose an earthquake occurs just as the tiger appears! This is what actually happened to a friend of Mr George Hogan Knowles, the author of 4 In the Grip of the Jungles ’ (says ‘ John o’ London’s Weekly ’). Everything was as still as death, he said, when a low murmuring sound arose like distant thunder. “ Suddenly the grass in front of mo heaves up, and the tiger’s kill moves; and that that very instant that my tree, too, shakes violently a rush and a deafening roar nearly paralyse me. To my breathless astonishment, while I am clinging to the tree with my ‘ machan ’ at all angles, I see the lame tiger in a furious rage out before mo from somewhere to protect his kill. His hair stands bristling up on his arched back. He has apparently been crouching by watching his kill, and now actually thinks that somebody or something is palling it away.” Then the shaking stops, and the tiger slinks back into cover again. The watching hunter has just found that the ropes supporting his “ machan ” are dangerously loose, when there is a gust of gritty wind followed by another rumbling, echoing crash:— “ The kill distinctly lifts up—rolling over this time—and out comes the furious tiger again with a thunderous roar and seizes the kill desperately. Ho and his kill seem to be rolling, mixed up together on the ground, and, horror upon horror, my ‘ machan ’ is giving way! I am clutching the tree and my rifle in grim desperation,' when suddenly the ropes burst, and the string-laced bed hangs and swings in the air, . . . At this terrible moment I hear big stones rattling down the hillside behind me, and I look up. There, to my unspeakable horror, I see the bare hill brows almost knocking against each other—swaying like the heads of drunken men.” The hunter miraculously escapes death amid the boulders that come thundering down and the trees that crash round him—and bags the tiger, a “ magnificent specimen which measured over 10ft!”

CORNERED BY AN ELEPHANT

But little things like tigers and earthquakes are a more nothing to Mr Knowles. On one occasion, with his two sisters and a friend, Lieutenant 8., he went to meet a party returning from a tiger shoot. He had been delayed in camp, and was hurrying to catch them up when he heard his sisters scream. Never, he tells us, has he covered 200yds quicker in his life: “ There Lieutenant 8., with wonder T fill pluck, is waving a thin cane ii| front of the trunk of an enormous wild tusker. Behind him my two poor sisters are clutching each other in terror and screaming wildly. Each time they attempt to move back in order to run the horrible monster with his huge, terrifying tusks—projecting in front like two white enamelled beams—makes a savage thrust forward, and they stand still in terror. , . . The next

instant, supporting Lieutenant B. with a loud shout, I reach my sisters, and draw them back, flourishing my stick under the huge elephant’s trunk, n

He realises that it is a rogue elephant which has been terrorising the neighbourhood. While the men continue to shout at the elephant the women manage to escape;—

“ Looking up at his great head we concentrate desperately on his murderous eyes, like small red marbles, and wave pur sticks high in the air. The brute has only to put out his trunk to grab us. But we begin to see red, too, and it is a fight of human will-power against the ungovernable instinct of wanton savagery. We know that our lives are at stake and we must drive the brute off. The slightest wavering or hesitation and we are lost!” But it is yet another victory for higher intelligence. Waving their sticks, they drive the monster back step by step. Suddenly its attention is caught by some coolies. A charge, and one poor wretch is seized and crushed to death. But the white men escape, and some days later the rogue elephant is tracked down and pays the penalty for its folly in defying a white man. SAVED BY A NATIVE. Another time Mr Knowles and his friend of the earthquake adventure wore tiger shooting in the jungle,

mounted on elephants. Once again without warning they come face to face with a huge tusker. They dare not move an inch for fear of being charged. This time they cannot fix it with their eyes. They merely lyait, hoping for the best: “We hear a crash through the undergrowth at our back, and, to our unspeakable horror, we see the halfnaked figure of a man suddenly darting past our trees right in front of the tusker! It looks as if the thing in human form, whatever it might be, has suddenly gone mad. It appears that ho is going to throw himself at the feet of the tusker. But, no! With strange yells he dances but five paces in front of the brute, as if to tantalise him, and then, as the monster in a paroxysm of fury turns on him with a terrific roar, as if a bomb were exploding, the agile figure skips to one side and dashes off in the direction of the valley from which the big elephant so silently emerged.” They seize the chance to tiro a volley over the rogue’s head, making it forget its tormentor and dash off through the trees. The plucky native was their buffalo-man. who had come up in time to risk his life for theirs. Saved again. Mr Knowles once had a weird experience in the deserted city of FatehpurSikri, built by Akbar, the great Mogul Emperor of the sixteenth century. With a young Raja, to whom he was tutor, Mr Knowles went to look for a panther which was said to haunt the empty courts and palaces. An old fakir offered to guide them. They secured a carriage to drive them from Agra on a certain day, and were told that the fakir had gone on ahead. Arriving at the dead city, “ the driver and his small mate.offered to carry our rifles, and accompanied us up the vast flight of steps. . . . Reaching the top of the pavement, we beheld the aged fakir, standing alone under a spacious, central dome—when, to our sudden astonishment, the driver and the boy dropped our rifles' with a yell of tenor, as it seemed, and fled, leaping down the stairway as fast as they could go. In a few moments our coach was rattling away in a cloud of dust.” NEARLY A TRAGEDY.

The figure of the fakir flits from place to place, and they follow. They come upon the panther m a small courtyard, “but as-<my rifle goes up I notice with anxiety that the fakir—who seemed to have completely vanished as wo entered the courtyard—suddenly, at the critical moment, comes gliding in through the archway tp the left of the high wall, which rears up on the other side df the panther and appears completely to imprison him. Horrors! the foolish man seems to bo advancing, and wo dare not fire for fear of a ricochet—from that high, stone wall in front of us—hitting him. “ Run! ” I shout to the fakir in desperation; but a rush from the infuriated panther at bay instantly drowns my voice. Tho Raja is down, with tho spotted brute on top of him! The muzzle of my rifle, swinging round instinctively to the' onslaught, is almost touching the open jaws of tho fiend, and I pull the trigger. ...” They did not see the fakir again, but after walking a mile or two they found their coach by the roadside. The driver, trembling with fear, poured out an incoherent story about the fakir not having gone to the dead city at all:

Wo asked the man to be more explicit. “ The fakir died at Agra,” he said, “ two days ago, and was cremated on the banks of the river. It was his 4 bhoot ’ (ghost) we saw under the Great Gateway this afternoon, and the boy and I,” he said, “ were so dumbfounded that we fled in terror.”

But ghost or no ghost, Mr Knowles says he never found a satisfactory solution of the problem. Mr_ Knowles tells wonderful stories of things he has seen—a panther, wishing to, catch a monkey, camouflaging itself as one; a deer pretending to be badly hurt in order to distract attention from her young; tiger cubs being taught to hunt; fights to the death between elephant and tiger; fish hawks at work on a river, and so on. Altogether Mr Knowles’s book is crammed with incident, and should Interest equally those who, like the author himself, think nothing of shooting a couple of tigers before breakfast and those who have never in their lives bagged anything larger than sparrows.