ALIVE OR DEAD ?

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8309, 6 May 1905, Page 2

ALIVE OR DEAD ?

(By H. HERBERT NOYES, in the " Pall Mall Gazette.")

Burn-Halkett, Warden of Mines of a protected Malay State, had returned from a day's excursion in the jungle, about four o'clock in the afternoon, leg-weary, leech-bitten, and wet to the skin, to discard his sodden kharki garments, and, after a welcome bath, to stietch himself, clad only in Malay sarong and kabiyah, on a long Fenang chair iv the verandah of his bungalow. And while patiently awaiting the advent of the tea-tray, and idly watching the mists drifting around, and massing on, the summit of Bukit Kutu, a spur of th? main Malayan range on the opposite ride of the valley, to him entered, suddenly, Ahmet, head boy and factotum of his modest bachelor establishment, grand purveyor in ordinary of the station news and" giver of the. law to the half-dozen Chinese servants who constituted the entourage of the bungalow. . Mat, colloquially so known, had laid aside, for the nonce, the ordinary calm, judicial manner which invariably characterised his dealings with Ms master, and was vjjsibiy excited. " There is news of tiger, Tuan," he said. But as Mat, in his eagerness to be identified as an extremely keen shikaree, had not infrequently given similar information, and not always withi the most satisfactory results, BurnHalkett waited, unmoved, for further details. ' " The Tuan knows of the shaft-min-ing on the Chunkat-Pari Hills, near by?" continued Mat, and the Warden nodded; the hills in question were but a few hundred yards away. "Certainly he does; and. without there now waits a coolie, who brings news of a tiger found in an abandoned shaft, near at hand; will the Tuan come?" Would he! Less than two minutes had passed before he was ready, and selecting a rifle from a stand in the fiall Burn-Halkett hurried out to the servants' quarters, where a half r olotfced Chinese miner grinned his delight at seeing him, and immediately set off without further waste of time and led the way to where a small footpath wound, tortuously, through the thick bamboo jungle by which the bungalow was surrounded. Ten minutes' sharp walking brought the pair to an old clearing, in the centre of which an excited group of Chinese, interspersed with a few Malays, was grouped around the mouth of a small circular shaft, one of the many hundreds that honeyconibed the ground for miles around. The , chattering mob fell back and made way for Burn-Halkett as he strode' up and peered into the semidarkened shaft, which was about three, feet in diameter and some thirty feet in depth, and covered, at the bottom, with a few inches of stagnant water. Reared on his hind legs, to keep his body as dry as possible, and clawing at the hard clay sides of the excavation, in a diswuraged sort of way,, was a three-quarter grown tiger, that, beyond turning bis head occasionally to blink and snarl at the downcast faces clustered at tjfe pit's mouth, appeared to be taking? things very philosophically. t "Who found the beast?" demanded the Warden, whenJhe had looked this fill, and the Malay Penghulu (headman of the district), who had constituted hhriself master of the ceremonies, indicated a smirking Hokkien coolie. "Wilt^seJlP" asked Burn-Halkett, in the vernacular of the man, who, afr ter consultation with his friends, agreed to accept ten dollars for his find. Meanwhile the Penghulu, scious that in the absence ef white authority he would have annexed the firid . without scruple, listened in disgusted silence to the bargaining, ahd_.. the negotiations concluded, asked:— "Will the Tu'an shoot the animal or take him alive?" " Alive, if possible," replied Burn-Halkett, ' and the Malay answered, carelessly, "Nothing easier, Tuan." ■'■.■....■ With the aid of some heavy timber planks he speedily instructed _ strong cage over the' mouth of the shaft, and after some unsuccessful angling the tiger was at length caugnt _y its head and legs by means of noosea ratftan lowered into the opening ; half an hour afterwards he „ was comfortably installed in the cage, in the compound of the Warden's bungalow, and, without loss of time, proceeded to announce his captivity tc the world by a series of shrieks and long-drawn wails, which lasted nightly, from dusk io sunrise. "What are you going to do with that brute of yours?" inquired the District Officer of Burn-Halkett some days later. " Tame him, for one thing" answered the proud owner; "sit up for hia mother for another, and sell h^n to Jamrach's man in Singapore for a pot of money afterwards. The Malays tell roe/that his white ears and black markings show that he is a real ' rimau raja,' and the whole family's hanging about listening to the brute o' nights." "Tame your grandmother!" retortAd the D.O. rud_ty. " Whoever heard of a tc°v of that age being tamed P You'll Lave us all /in our graves for want of sleep before you quiten him. M But he spoke less disparagingly a few weeks later, when, by dint or unfaltering patience and continuous allnight sittings on the Warden's verandah, a splendid ten-foot tigress,; at? tr acted by the incessant lamentations of her offspring, fell to the D.O.s double-barrelled express. And Buny-Halkptt, stimulated by an offer of five hundred dollars . from "Jamrach's. people " for a pair of ycung tigers— one, they stated, was of no use to tbemf-set innumerable traps fo<* the other cub, which, as the^ MaIsys informed him, was prowling in the neighbourhood. ) Weeks passed, however, before news reached him, .; by the. mouth of one of his own overseers, that some mining coolies had been seen, a few miles distant from the village, bearing a live tiger cub, bound, ancL slung on a bamboo pole, in the direction- of their camp. Ordering out his fleetest pony, BurnHalkett rode post-hate to the spot, to find, on inquiry, that the report was correct,- and that the coolie's in question were employed on the mine of one Ah Tong, a wealthy Chinese mine-own-er Thither he hastened, to be met at the entrance of the kong-si house, by the' silk-clad Tau-keh, who came bowline to meet him. "The news is good, Tuan," he said, in reply to the ordinary salutation of the country. "A tiger P The Tuan would hear of the tiger? Yes, it is true that my men have captured one." "That I know," replied Burn-Hal-kett. will they sell him?" "Truly, I kriow not," was the answer- f< But we will inquire." /. "Certain of riry contract coolies found the beast in a disused Well," chattered Ah Tong, "and having bound him with cords, they brought him hither. 1^ was yery; good luck," he added reflectively. • He halted outside a remote coolie house, and spoke In their own uncouth dialect to a group, of men lounging near tfee entrance, arid was answered by one 'of the party, who, with every appearance of undisguised satisfaction, invited them to enter. "Certainly, the animal is here,", he said, in the vernacular, to the Englishman, "but"— and he qualified, his statement with the manner of one on whom Fortune had played a shabby trick— "he is not very fat, after all."

! / Wondering at the comment, BurnHalkett followed his guides into the men's mess-room, where the coolie pointed cheerfully in the direction of the huge rice coppers, but the Warden, his mind intent on furry stripes, gazed around him in vain. ' The man laughed and gabbled to the erriployer, who pointed to a white carcase hanging head downwards from a beam, which Burn-Halkett had naturi ally mistaken f_r that Chinese luxury, a pig. "There, Tuan, is part of the tiger, and here is some more of him," he said,, and indioated sundry dishes on the mess table. ■ ■ Stupefied, Burn-Halkett gaaed, as the liver, mask, claws and other portions of the defunct cub were duly exhibited and their various properties and apocryphal virtues dilated upon by the attendant showman, aided by his ma* ter. ■''■_, "But I understood be was alive," the Warden at last managed to say. "Alive he was, Tuan, but now thou seestl For, following their custom, my men plunged him, bound, into boiling water, even as the swinei so that none of his virtue might be lost. And, trulyi it waa well done, for he will make muoh medicine and cause, -ho men to be strong as—as — tigers. But what part of him does the Tuan require P" " "None," said the Warden abruptly, " but I would have giverr* much money for him alive." /-"Hye-ah! Tuan, and shall a mas sell his luck ?" asked the Tau-keh. "As to that, I know not," returned Burn-Halkett, who concealed his disappointment manfully; "but no later than a moon ago I purchased the fellow to this one for ten dollars." j " Then," said Ah Tong, with cc_tviotion, "the man from whom the Tuan j purohase_ was a fool; but doubtless he ! was afraid to'say the Tnan ■' nay.' " j Wherefore, unless he has since died, | which is improbable, or tte remainder of the European community has incontinently arisen in revolt against the nigbtly disturber of its sleep, whioh is ; not unlikely, there is, to this day, in the compound of a certain Malay bungalow, 1 within easy distance of _ the coast, a tiger, of the true Raja variety, which can, without undue esertion *of appetite or straining of digestion, aty count for the meat of three full-grow^ buffaloes per mensem, and for wluch no reasonable offer will be refused.