A NIGHT OF TERROR.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIV, Issue XXI, 25 May 1895, Page 503

A NIGHT OF TERROR.

Mr E. D. Cuming gives it as his opinion, based upon some experience, that night-shooting in Indian jungles is a sport the charms of which may easily be exaggerated. The dreary, monotonous waiting, the cramped attitude, the swarms of insects—these are some of the things which, as he says, are too seldom taken into account. However, he had at least one night of shooting which could not be classed as monotonous. With a young Karen, whose business it was to keep him awake, he had taken up bis station upon a rock, three feet above the sand, to wait for the coming of a man-eating tiger which was known to frequent that neighbourhood. Hour after hour we sat there. The night was cold, and I leaned back against the shelving rock, tired and sleepy. My rifle lay across my knees, and some evil spirit prompted me to open the breech, that it might lie more easily. I had begun to doze, when my companion touched my arm lightly and whispered the single word, 'Kya. ’ I woke with a start. There he was coming slowly through the mist, straight toward the rock, with the rolling swagger of a tiger on the prowl. I clutched my rifle and snapped the breech. For the first time since I had owned the weapon it refused to dose I

The tiger, off which I had not taken my eyes, had reached the foot of the rock, and attracted by my movements paused deliberately to gaze at us. With the useless rifle in my hands, I sat facing the animal, utterly unable to move. The Karen crouched beside me, with his head between his knees and his hands clasped above it trembling in every limb.

The brute was barely six feet from me. With two steps he could enter the nook and select either of us at his leisure.

The fixed stare of the blazing green eyeballs paralyzed me. For fully half a minute—it seemed an hour—he stood there motionless ; bnt at length he passed on, still keeping his eyes on me till he disappeared round the corner of the rock.

Relieved of that appalling stare I breathed more freely, and with desperate eagerness exerted all my strength to close the breech of my rifle. I could feel no obstruction, for it was not quite light enough to see, but it would not close, and I paused—to see once more that mesmeric gaze fixed upon me. The tiger had passed round the rock and come back. It was sickening. Helpless and dazed, I sat blankly returning the steadfast stare that so perfectly unnerved me. This interview lasted longer than the first, I could not close my eyes, even if I would. The perspiration streamed down my face, and I felt the cold drops trickling slowly down my back. How I anathematized the brute for his calm, dispassionate gaze ! How I deplored my own folly in not having selected a tree to shoot from. For now, though I was shaking all over, a strange, defiant feeling was creeping over me, and, a moment later, the tiger once more turned away. This time he took the path toward the opposite jungles, and disappeared. Gone I and I lay baek and gave way to a fit of * cold shivers,' such as I had never felt before.

Daybreak, long delayed, came at length, and cramped and shivering, I hastened to examine my rifle. A small but fleshy leaf had fonnd its way into the grip action, and crushed though it was, the stringy fibres refused to allow the close-fitting mechanism to work. The Karen, who was watching me, murmured in Burmese, * Witchcraft !’ and after the night 1 had jnst passed, I was half-inclined to agree with him.