THE MOHAN MAN-EATER

EIGHTEEN miles from our summer home in the Himalayas
there is a long ridge running east and west, some 9,000 feet
in height. On the upper slopes of the eastern end of this ridge
there is a luxuriant growth of oat grass; below this grass the
hill falls steeply away in a series of rock cliffs to the Kosi river
below.

One day a party of women and girls from the village on the
north t f ace of the ridge were cutting the oat grass, when a tiger
suddenly appeared in their midst. In the stampede that
followed an elderly woman lost her footing, rolled down the
steep slope, and disappeared over the cliff. The tiger, evidently
alarmed by the screams of the women, vanished as mysteriously
as it had appeared, and when the women had reassembled and
recovered from their fright, they went down the grassy slope
and, looking over the cliff, saw their companion lying on a
narrow ledge some distance below them.

The woman said she was badly injured it was found later
that she had broken a leg and fractured several ribs and that
she could not move. Ways and means of a rescue were dis-
, cussed, and it was finally decided that it was a job for men;
and as no one appeared to be willing to remain at the spot, they
informed the injured woman that they were going back to the
village for help. The woman begged not to be left alone, how-
ever, and at her entreaty a girl, sixteen years of age, volunteered
to stay with her. So, while the rest of the party set off for the
village, the girl made her way down to the right, where a rift
in the cliff enabled her to get a foothold on the ledge.

110 Man-eaters of Kumaon

This ledge only extended half-way across the face of the
cliff and ended, a few yards from where the woman was lying,
in a shallow depression. Fearing that she might fall off the
ledge and be killed on the rocks hundreds of feet below the
woman asked the girl to move her to this depression, and this
difficult and dangerous feat the girl successfully accomplished.
There was only room for one in the depression, so that the girl
squatted, as only an Indian can squat, on the ledge facing the
woman.

The village was four miles away, and once, and once again,
the two on the ledge speculated as to the length of time it
would take their companions to get back to the village; what
men they were likely to find in the village at that time of day;
how long it would take to explain what had happened, and
finally, how long it would take the rescue party to arrive.

Conversation had been carried on in whispers for fear the
tiger might be lurking in the vicinity and hear them and then,
suddenly, the woman gave a gasp and the girl, seeing the look
of horror on her face and the direction in which she was look-
ing, turned her head and over her shoulder saw the tiger,
stepping out of the rift in the cliff onto the ledge.

Few of us, I imagine, have escaped that worst of all night-
mares in which, while our limbs and vocal cords are paralysed
with fear, some terrible beast in monstrous form approaches to
destroy us; the nightmare from which, sweating fear in every
pore, we waken with a cry of thankfulness to Heaven that it
was only a dream. There was no such happy awakening from
the nightmare of that unfortunate girl, and little imagination is
needed to picture the scene. A rock cliff with a narrow ledge
running partly across it and ending in a little depression in
which an injured woman is lying; a young girl frozen with ter-
jor squatting on the ledge, and a tiger slowly creeping towards
her; retreat in every direction cut off, and no help at hand.

Mothi Singh, an old friend of mine, was in the village

The Mohan Man-eater 111

visiting a sick daughter when the women arrived, and he headed
the rescue party. When this party went down the grassy slope
and looked over the cliff, they saw the woman lying in a swoon,
and on the ledge they saw splashes of blood.

The injured woman was carried back to the village, and
when she had been revived and had told her story, Mothi Singh
set out on his eighteen-mile walk to me. He was an old man
well over sixty, but he scouted the suggestion that he was tired
and needed a rest, so we set off together to make investigations.
But there was nothing that I could do, for twenty-four hours
had elapsed and all that the tiger had left of the brave young
girl, who had volunteered to stay with her injured companion,
were a few bits of bone and her torn and blood-stained clothes.

This was the first human being killed by the tiger which
later received recognition in Government records as ' The Mohan
Man-eater ' .

After killing the girl, the tiger went down the Kosi valley
for the winter, killing on its way among other people two
men of the Public Works Department, and the daughter-in-law
of our member of the Legislative Council. As summer
approached it returned to the scene of its first kill, and for
several years thereafter its beat extended up and down the Kosi
valley from Kakrighat to Gargia a distance of roughly forty
miles until it finally took up its quarters on the hill above
Mohan, in the vicinity of a village called Kartkanoula.

At the District Conference, to which reference has been made
in a previous story, the three man-eating tigers operating at that
time in the Kumaon Division were classed as follows in their
order of importance:

ist Chowgarh, Naini Tal District.
2nd Mohan, Almora District.
3rd Kanda, Garhwal District.

After the Chowgarh tiger had been accounted for I was

112 Man-eaters of Kumaon

reminded by Baines, Deputy Commissioner, Almora, that only
a part of my promise made at the conference had been fulfilled,
and that the Mohan tiger was next on the list. The tiger, he
stated, was becoming more active and a greater menace every
day, and had during the previous week killed three human
beings, residents of Kartkanoula village. It was to this village
Baines now suggested I should go.

While I had been engaged with the Chowgarh tiger, Baines
had persuaded some sportsmen to go to Kartkanoula, but though
they had sat up over human and animal kills they had failed to
make contact with the man-eater and had returned to their
depot at Ranikhet. Baines informed me I should now have the
ground to myself a very necessary precaution, for nerves wear
thin when hunting man-eaters, and accidents are apt to result
when two or more parties are hunting the same animal.

ii

It was on a blistering hot day in May that I, my two servants,
and the six Garhwalis I had brought with me from Naini Tal
alighted from the i p.m. train at Ramnagar and set off on our
twenty-four-mile foot journey to Kartkanoula. Our first stage
was only seven miles, but it was evening before we arrived at
Gargia. I had left home in a hurry on receiving Baines 1 letter,
and had not had time to ask for permission to occupy the Gargia
Forest Bungalow, so I slept out in the open.

On the far side of the Kosi river at Gargia there is a cliff
several hundred feet high, and while I was trying to get sleep
I heard what I thought were stones falling off the cliff on the
rocks below. The sound was exactly the same as would be
made by bringing two stones violently together. After some
time this sound worried me, as sounds will on a hot night, and
as the moon was up and the light good enough to avoid
stepping on snakes, I left my camp bed and set out to make
investigations. I found that the sound was being made by a

The Mohan Man-eater 113

colony ofjrogs in a marsh by the side of the road. I have heard
land-, water- and tree-frogs making strange sounds in different
parts of the world, but I have never heard anything so strange
as the sound made by the frogs at Gargia in the month of May.

After a very early start next morning we did the twelve
miles to Mohan before the sun got hot, and while my men
were cooking their food and my servants were preparing my
breakfast, the chowkidar of the bungalow, two Forest Guards,
and several men from the Mohan bazaar, entertained me with
stories of the man-eater, the most recent of which concerned
the exploits of a fisherman who had been fishing the Kosi river.
One of the Forest Guards claimed to be the proud hero of this
exploit, and he described very graphically how he had been
out one day with the fisherman and, on turning a bend in the
river, they had come face to face with the man-eater; and how
the fisherman had thrown away his rod and had grabbed the
rifle off his the Forest Guard's shoulder; and how they had
run for their lives with the tiger close on their heels. ' Did
you look back?' I asked. 'No, sahib/ said he, pitying my
ignorance. ' How could a man who was running for his life
from a man-eater look back?'; and how the fisherman, who
was leading by a head, in a thick patch of grass had fallen over
a sleeping bear, after which there had been great confusion and
shouting and everyone, including the bear, had run in different
directions and the fisherman had got lost; and how after a long
time the fisherman had eventually found his way back to the
bungalow and had said a lot to him the Forest Guard on the
subject of having run away with his rifle and left him empty-
handed to deal with a man-eating tiger and an angry bear. The
Forest Guard ended up his recital by saying that the fisherman
had left Mohan the following day saying that he had hurt his
leg when he fell over the bear, and that anyway there were
no fish to be caught in the Kosi river.

By midday we were ready to continue our journey, and,

9

114 Man-eaters of Kumaon

with many warnings from the small crowd that had collected
to see us off to keep a sharp lookout for the man-eater while
going through the dense forest that lay ahead of us, we set out
on our four-thousand-foot climb to Kartkanoula.
1 Our progress was slow, for my men were carrying heavy
loads and the track was excessively steep, and the heat terrific.
There had been some trouble in the upper villages a short time
previously, necessitating the dispatch from Naini Tal of a small
police force, and I had been advised to take everything I needed
for myself and my men with me, as owing to the unsettled con-
ditions it would not be possible to get any stores locally. This
was the reason for the heavy loads my men were carrying.

After many halts we reached the edge of the cultivated land
in the late afternoon, and as there was now no further danger
to be apprehended for my men from the man-eater, I left them
and set out alone for the Foresters' Hut which is visible from
Mohan, and which had been pointed out to me by the Forest
Guards as the best place for my stay while at Kartkanoula.

The hut is on the ridge of the high hill overlooking Mohan,
and as I approached it along the level stretch of road running
across the face of the hill, in turning a corner in a ravine where
there is some dense undergrowth, I came on a woman filling
an earthenware pitcher from a little trickle of water flowing
down a wooden trough. Apprehending that my approach on
rubber-soled shoes would frighten her, I coughed to attract her
attention, noticed that she started violently a*s I did so, and a
few yards beyond her, stopped to light a cigarette. A minute
or two later I asked, without turning my head, if it was safe
for anyone to be in this lonely spot, and after a little hesitation
the woman answered that it was not safe, but that water had
to be fetched and as there was no one in the home to accompany
her, she had come alone. Was there no man? Yes, there was
a man, but he was in the fields ploughing, and in any case it
was the duty of women to fetch water. How long would it

The Mohan Man-eater H5

take to fill the pitcher? Only a little longer. The woman had;
got over her fright and shyness, and I was now subjected to $
close cross-examination. Was I a policeman? No. Was I a
Forest Officer? No, Then who was I? Just a man. Why
had I come? To try and help the people of Kartkanoula. In
what way? By shooting the man-eater. Where had I heard
about the man-eater? Why had I come alone? Where were
my men? How many were there? How long would I stay?
And so on.

The pitcher was not declared full until the woman had
satisfied her curiosity, and as she walked behind me she pointed
to one of several ridges running down the south face of the hill,
and pointing out a big tree growing on a grassy slope said that
three days previously the man-eater had killed a woman under
it; this tree I noted, with interest, was only two or three hundred
yards from my objective the Foresters' Hut. We had now
come to a footpath running up the hill, and as she took it the
woman said the village from which she had come was just round
the shoulder of the hill, and added that she was now quite safe.

Those of you who know the women of India will realize
that I had accomplished a lot, especially when it is remembered
that there had recently been trouble in this area with the police.
So far from alarming the woman and thereby earning the
hostility of the entire countryside I had, by standing by while*
she filled her pitcher and answering a few questions, gained
a friend who would in the shortest time possible acquaint the
whole population of the village of my arrival; that I was not
an officer of any kind, and that the sole purpose of my visit was
to try to rid them of the man-eater.

in

The Foresters' Hut was on a little knoll some twenty yards
to the left of the road, and as the door was only fastened with
91 chain I opened it and walked inside. The room was about

116 Man-eaters of Knmaon

iien feet square and quite clean, but had a mouldy disused
smell; I learnt later that the hut had not been occupied since
the advent of the man-eater in that area eighteen months
previously. On either side of the main room there were two
narrow slips of rooms, one used as a kitchen, and the other
as a fuel store. The hut would make a nice safe shelter for
my men, and having opened the back door to let a current of
air blow through the room, I went outside and selected a spot
between the hut and the road for my 40-lb. tent. There was no
furniture of any kind in the hut, so I sat down on a rock near
the road to await the arrival of my men.

The ridge at this point was about fifty yards wide, and as
tjxe hut was on the south edge of the ridge, and the village on
ttie north face of the hill, the latter was not visible from the
former. I had been sitting on the rock for about ten minutes
when a head appeared over the crest from the direction of the
village, followed by a second and a third. My friend the water-
carrier had not been slow in informing the village of my arrival.

When strangers meet in India and wish to glean information
on any particular subject from each other, it is customary to
refrain from broaching the subject that has brought them
together whether accidentally or of set purpose until the very
last moment, and to fill up the interval by finding out everything
concerning each other's domestic and private affairs; as for
instance, whether married and if so the number and sex of
children and their ages; if not married, why not; occupation
and amount of pay, and so on. Questions that would in any
other part of the world earn one a thick ear are in India and
especially in our hills asked so artlessly and universally that no
one who has lived among the people dreams of taking offence
at them.

In my conversation with the woman I had answered many
of the set questions, and the ones of a domestic nature which
it is not permissible for a woman to ask of a man were being

The Mohan Man-eater 117

put to me when my men arrived. They had filled a kettle at
the little spring, and in an incredibly short time dry sticks were
collected, a fire lit, the kettle boiled, and tea and biscuits pro-
duced. As I opened a tin of condensed milk I heard the men
asking my servants why condensed milk was being used instead
of fresh milk and receiving the answer that there was no fresh
milk; and further that, as it had been apprehended that owing
to some previous trouble in this area no fresh milk would
be available, a large supply of tinned milk had been brought.
The men appeared to be very distressed on hearing this and
after a whispered conversation one of them, who I learnt later
was the Headman of Kartkanoula, addressed me and said it
was an insult to them to have brought tinned milk, when all
the resources of the village were at my disposal. I admitted
my mistake, which I said was due to my being a stranger to
that locality, and told the Headman that if he had any milk
to spare I would gladly purchase a small quantity for my daily
requirements, but that beyond the milk, I wanted for nothing.

My loads had now been unstrapped, while more men had
arrived from the village, and when I told my servants where
I wanted them to pitch my tent there was a horrified exclama-
tion from the assembled villagers. Live in a tent indeed!
Was I ignorant of the fact that there was a man-eating tiger in
this area and that it used this road regularly every night? If I
doubted their word, let me come and see the claw marks on the
doors of the houses where the road ran through the upper end
of the village. Moreover, if the tiger did not eat me in the
tent it would certainly eat my men in the hut, if I was not
there to protect them. This last statement made my men prick
up their ears and add their entreaties to the advice of the
villagers, so eventually I agreed to stay in the main room,
while my two servants occupied the kitchen, and the six
Garhwalis the fuel store.

The subject of the man-eater having been introduced, it was

118 Man-eaters of Kumaofi

now possible for me to pursue it without admitting that it was
the one object I had wished to introduce from the moment
the first man had put his head over the ridge. The path leading
down to the tree where the tiger had claimed its last victim was
pointed out to me, and the time of day, and the circumstances
tinder which the woman had been killed, explained. The
road along which the tiger came every night, I was informed,
tan eastward to Baital Ghat with a branch down to Mohan, and
westward to Chaknakl on the Ramganga river. The road going
west, after running through the upper part of the village and
through cultivated land for half a mile, turned south along the
face of the hill, and on rejoining the ridge on whigh the hut
was, followed the ridge right down to Chaknakl. This portion
of the road between Kartkanoula and Chaknakl, some six miles
long, was considered to be very dangerous, and had not been
used since the advent of the man-eater; I subsequently found
that after leaving the cultivated land the road entered dense tree
and scrub jungle, which extended right down to the river.

The main cultivation of Kartkanoula village is on the north
face of the hill, and beyond this cultivated land there are several
small ridges with deep ravines between. On the nearest of these
ridges, and distant about a thousand yards from the Foresters'
Hut, there is a big pine tree. Near this tree, some ten days
previously, the tiger had killed, partly eaten and left, a woman,
and as the three sportsmen who were staying in a Forest
Bungalow four miles away were unable to climb the pine tree the
villagers had put up three machans in three separate trees, at
distances varying from one hundred to one hundred and fifty
yards from the kill, and the machans had been occupied by the
sportsmen and their servants a little before sunset. There was a
young moon at the time, and after it had set the villagers heard
a number of shots being fired, and when they questioned the
servants next morning the servants said they did not know what
had been fired at for they themselves had not seen anything.

The Mohan Man-eater 119

Two days later a cow had been- killed over which the sportsmen
had sat /and again; as on the previous occasion, shots had been
fired after the moon had set. It is these admittedly sporting
but unsuccessful attempts to bag man-eaters that makes them
so wary, and the more difficult to shoot the longer they live.*

The villagers gave me one very interesting item of news in
connexion with the tiger. They said they always knew when
it had come into the village by the low moaning sound it made.
On questioning them closely I learnt that at times the sound
was continuous as the tiger passed between the houses, while
at other times the sound stopped for sometimes short, and other
times long periods.

From this information I concluded (a) that the tiger was
suffering from a wound, (b) that the wound was of such a
nature that the tiger only felt it when in motion, and that
therefore, (c) the wound was in one of its legs. I was assured
that the tiger had not been wounded by any local shikari, or
by any of the sportsmen from Ranikhet who had sat up for it;
however, this was of little importance, for the tiger had been
a man-eater for years, and the wound that I believed it was
suffering from might have been the original cause of its be-
coming a man-eater. A very interesting point and one that
could only be cleared up by examining the tiger after it
was dead.

The men were curious to know why I was so interested in
the sound made by the tiger, and when I told them that it
indicated the animal had a wound in one of its legs and that
the wound had been caused either by a bullet, or porcupine
quills, they disagreed with my reasoning and said that on the
occasions they had seen the tiger it appeared to be in sound
condition, and further, that the ease with which it killed and
carried off its victims was proof that it was not crippled in any
way. However, what I told them was remembered and later
earned me the reputation of being gifted with second sight.

120 Man-eaters of Kumaon

IV

When passing through Ramnagar I had asked the Tahsildar
to purchase two young male buffaloes for me and to send them
to Mohan, where my men would take them over.

I told the villagers I intended tying up one of the buffaloes
near the tree where three days previously the woman had been
killed and the other on the road to Chaknakl, and they said
they could think of no better sites, but that they would talk
the matter over among themselves, and let me know in the
morning if they had any other suggestions to make. Night was
now drawing in, and before leaving the Headman promised
to send word to all the adjoining villages in the morning to let
them know of my arrival, the reason for my coming, and to
impress on them the urgency of letting me know without loss
of time of any kills, or attacks by the tiger in their areas.

The musty smell in the room had much decreased though
it was still noticeable. However, I paid no attention to it, and
after a bath and dinner put two stones against the doors there
being no other way of keeping them shut and being bone-tired
after my day's exertions went to bed and to sleep. I am a
light sleeper, and two or three hours later I awoke on hearing
an animal moving about in the jungle. It came right up to
the back door. Getting hold of a rifle and a torch, I moved
the stone aside with my foot and heard an animal moving off
as I opened the door it might from the sound it was making
have been the tiger, but it might also have been a leopard or
a porcupine. However, the jungle was too thick for me to see
what it was. Back in the room and with the stone once more
in position, I noticed I had developed a sore throat, which I
attributed to having sat in the wind after the hot walk up from
Mohan; but when my servant pushed the door open and brought
in my early-morning cup of tea, I found I was suffering from
an attack of laryngitis, due possibly to my having slept in
a long-disused hut, the roof of which was swarming with bats.

The Mohan Man-eater 121

My servant informed me that * he and his companion had
escaped infection, but that the six Garhwalis in the fuel store
were all suffering from the same complaint as I was. My stock
of medicine consisted of a two-ounce bottle of iodine and a few
tablets of quinine, and on rummaging in my gun-case I found
a small paper packet of permanganate which my sister had
provided for me on a previous occasion. The packet was soaked
through with gun oil, but the crystals were still soluble, and
I put a liberal quantity of the crystals into a tin of hot water,
together with some iodine. The resulting gargle was very
potent, and while it blackened our teeth it did much to relieve
the soreness in our throats.

After an early breakfast I sent four men down to Mohan
to bring up the two buffaloes, and myself set off to prospect
the ground where the woman had been killed. From the direc-
tions I had received overnight I had no difficulty in finding the
spot where the tiger had attacked and killed the woman, as she
was tying the grass she had cut into a bundle. The grass, and
the rope she was using, were lying just as they had been left,
as were also two bundles of grass left by her companions when
they had run off in fright to the village. The men had told
me that the body of the woman had not been found, but from
the fact that three perfectly good lengths of rope and the dead
woman's sickle had been left in the jungle, I am inclined to
think that no attempt had been made to find her.

The woman had been killed at the upper end of a small
landslide, and the tiger had taken her down the slide and into*
a thick patch of undergrowth. Here the tiger had waited,
possibly to give the two women time to get out of sight, and
had then crossed the ridge visible from the hut, after which it
had gone with its kill straight down the hill for a mile or more
into dense tree and scrub jungle. The tracks were now four
days old, and as there was nothing to be gained by following
them further, I turned back to the hut.

122 Man-eaters of Kumaon

'. The climb back to the ridge was a very steep one, and when
I reached the hut at about midday I found an array of pots and
pans of various shapes and sizes on the verandah, all containing
milk. In contrast to the famine of the day before there was
now abundance, sufficient milk in fact for me to have bathed
in. My servants informed me they had protested to no effect
and that each man had said, as he deposited his vessel on the
verandah, that he would take good care that I used no more
condensed milk while I remained in their midst.

I did not expect the men to return from Mohan with the
buffaloes before nightfall, so after lunch I set out to have a
look at the road to Chaknakl.

From the hut the hill sloped gradually upwards to a height
of about five hundred feet, and was roughly triangular in shape.
The road, after running through cultivated land for half a mile,
turned sharply to the left, went across a steep rocky hill until
it regained the ridge, and then turned to the right and followed
the ridge down to Chaknakl. The road was level for a short
distance after coming out on the ridge, and then went steeply
down, the gradient in places being eased by hairpin bends.

I had the whole afternoon before me, and examined about
three miles of the road very carefully. When a tiger uses a
road regularly it invariably leaves signs of its passage by making
scratch marks on the side of the road. These scratch marks,
made for the same purpose as similar marks made by domestic
cats and all other members of the cat family, are of very great
interest to the sportsman, for th<ey provide him with the follow-
ing very useful information, ~{/L) whether the animal that has
made the mark is a male or a female, ^(4) the direction in which
it was travelling, (3^ the length of time that has elapsed since
it passed, (4)- the direction and approximate distance of its head-
quarters, (5} the nature of its kills, and finally \6) whether the
animal has recently had a meal of human flesh. The value of
this easily-acquired information to one who is hunting a man-

The Mohan Man-eater 123

ekter on strange ground will be easily understood. Tigers
leave their pug marks on the roads they use and these pug marks
can provide one with quite a lot of useful information, as for
instance the direction and speed at which the animal was
travelling, its sex and age, whether all four limbs are sound,
and if not sound, wjudx^particular limb, is.. defective.

The road I was on had through long disuse got overgrown
with short stiff grass and was therefore not, except in one or
two damp places, a good medium on which to leave pug marks.
One of these "damp places was within a few yards of where the
road came out on the ridge, and just below this spot there was
a green and very stagnant pool of water; a regular drinking
place for sambur.

I found several scratch marks just round the corner where
the road turned to the left after leaving the cultivated ground,
the most recent of which was three days old. Two hundred
yards from these scratch marks the road, for a third of its width,
ran under an overhanging rock. This rock was ten feet high
and at the top of it there was a flat piece of ground two or three
yards wide, which was only visible from the road when
approaching the rock from the village side. On the ridge I
found more scratch marks, but I did not find any pug marks
until I got to the first hairpin bend. Here, in cutting across the
bend, the tiger had left its tracks where it had jumped down
onto some soft earth. The tracks, which were a day old, were
a little distorted, but even so it was possible to see that they
had been made by a big, old, male tiger.

When one is moving in an area in which a man-eating tiger
is operating progress is of necessity very slow, for every
obstruction in one's line of walk, be it a bush, a tree, rock, or
an inequality in the ground capable of concealing death, has
to be cautiously approached, while at the same time, if a wind
is not blowing and there was no wind that evening a careful
and constant lookout has to be maintained behind and on either

124 Man-eaters of Kumaori

side. Further, there was much of interest to be looked at,
for it was the month of May, when orchids at this elevation
4,000 to 5,000 feet are at their best, and I have never seen a
greater variety or a greater wealth of bloom than the forests on
that hill had to show. The beautiful white butterfly orchid
was in greatest profusion, and every second tree of any size
appeared to have decked itself out with them.

It was here that I first saw a bird that Prater of the Bombay
Natural History Society later very kindly identified for me as
the Mountain Crag Martin, a bird of a uniform ash colour,
with a slight tinge of pink on its breast, and in size a little
smaller than a Rosy Pastor. These birds had their broods with
them, and while the young ones four to a brood sat in a row
on a dry twig at the top of a high tree, the parent birds kept
darting away often to a distance of two or three hundred yards
to catch insects. The speed at which they flew was amazing,
and I am quite sure there is nothing in feathers in North India,
not excluding our winter visitor the great Tibetan Swallow, that
these Martins could not make rings round. Another thing about
these birds that was very interesting was their wonderful eye-
sight. On occasions they would fly in a dead straight line for
several hundred yards before turning and coming back. It was
not possible, at the speed they were going, that they were chas-
ing insects on these long flights, and as after each flight the bird
invariably thrust some minute object into one of the gaping
mouths, I believe they were able to see insects at a range at
which they would not have been visible to the human eye
through the most powerful field-glasses.

Safeguarding my neck, looking out for tracks, enjoying nature
generally, and listening to all the jungle sounds a sambur a
mile away down the hillside in the direction of Mohan was
warning the jungle folk of the presence of a tiger, and a kakar
and a langur (Entellus monkey) on the road to Chaknakl were
warning other jungle folk of the presence of a leopard time

The Mohan Man-eater 125

passed quickly, and I found myself back at the overhanging
rock as the sun was setting. As I approached this rock I
marked it as being quite the most dangerous spot in all the
ground I had so far gone over. A tiger lying on the grass-
covered bit of ground above the rock would only have to wait
until anyone going either up or down the road was under or
had passed it to have them at his mercy a very dangerous spot
indeed, and one that needed remembering.

When I got back to the hut I found the two buffaloes had
arrived, but it was too late to do anything with them that
evening.

My servants had kept a fire going most of the day in th4
hut, the air of which was now sweet and clean, but even so
I was not going to risk sleeping in a closed room again; so I
made them cut two thorn bushes and wedge them firmly into
the doorways before going to bed. There was no movement
in the jungle near the back door that night, and after a sound
sleep I woke in the morning with my throat very much better.

I spent most of the morning talking to the village people
and listening to the tales they had to tell of the man-eater and
the attempts that had been made to shoot it, and after lunch
I tied up one buffalo on the small ridge the tiger had crossed
when carrying away the woman, and the other at the hairpin
bed where I had seen the pug marks.

Next morning I found both buffaloes sleeping peacefully after
having eaten most of the big feed of grass I had provided them
with. I had tied bells round the necks of both animals, and the
absence of any sound from these bells as I approached each
buffalo gave me two disappointments for, as I have said, I found
both of them asleep. That evening I changed the position of
the second buffalo from the hairpin bend to where the road came
out on the ridge, close to the pool of stagnant water.

The methods most generally employed in tiger shooting can
briefly be described as (a) sitting up, and (6) beating, and

126s Man-eaters of Kumaon

young male buffaloes are used as bait in both cases. The
procedure followed is to select the area most convenient -for
a sit-up, or for a beat, and to tie the bait out in the late evening
using a rope which the bait cannot, but which the tiger can,
break; and when the bait is taken to either sit up over the kill
on a machan in a tree, or beat the cover into which the kill
has been taken.

In the present case neither of these methods was feasible.
My throat, though very much better, was still sore and it would
not have been possible for me to have sat up for any length
of time without coughing, and a beat over that vast area of
heavily wooded and broken ground would have been hopeless
even if I had been able to muster a thousand men, so I decided
to stalk the tiger, and to this end carefully sited my two buffaloes
and tied them to stout saplings with four one-inch-thick hemp
ropes, and left them out in the jungle for the whole twenty-
four hours.

I now stalked the buffaloes in turn each morning as soon as 1
there was sufficient light to shoot by, and again in the evening,
for tigers, be they man-eaters or not, kill as readily in the day as
they do at night in areas in which they are not disturbed, and
during the day, while I waited for news from outlying villages,
nursed my throat, and rested, my six Garhwalis fed and watered
the buffaloes.

On the fourth evening when I was returning at sunset after
visiting the buffalo on the ridge, as I came round a bend in the'
road thirty yards from the overhanging rock, I suddenly, and
for the first time since my arrival at Kartkanoula, felt I was
in danger, and that the danger that threatened me was on the
rock in front of me. For five minutes I stood perfectly still
with my eyes fixed on the upper edge of the rock, watching
for movement. At that short range the flicker of an eyelid
would have caught my eyes, but there was not even this small
movement; and after going forward ten paces, I again stood

The Mohan Man-eater 127

watching for several minutes. The fact that I had seen no
movement did not in any way reassure me the man-eater was
on the rock, of that I was sure; and the question was, what was
I going to do about it? The hill, as I have already told you,
was very steep, had great rocks jutting out of it, and was
overgrown with long grass and tree and scrub jungle. Bad as
the going was, had it been earlier in the day I would have gone
back and worked round and above the tiger to try to get a*
shot at him, but with only half an hour of daylight left, and
the best part of a mile still to go, it would have been madness
to have left the road. So, slipping up the safety-catch and
putting the rifle to my shoulder, I started to pass the rock.

The road here was about eight feet wide, and going to the
extreme outer edge I started walking crab-fashion, feeling each
step with my feet before putting my weight down to keep from
stepping off into space. Progress was slow and difficult, but
as I drew level with the overhanging rock and then began to
pass it, hope rose high that the tiger would remain where he
was until I reached that part of the road from which the flat
bit of ground above the rock, on which he was lying, was
visible. The tiger, however, having failed to catch me off my
guard was taking no chances, and I had just got clear of the
rock when I heard a low muttered growl above me, and a little
later first a kakar went off barking to the right, and then two
hind sambur started belling near the crest of the triangular
hill.

The tiger had got away with a sound skin, but for the
matter of that, so had I, so there was no occasion for regrets,
and from the place on the hill where the sambur said he was,
I felt sure he would hear the bell I had hung round the neck
of the buffalo that was tied on the ridge near the stagnant
pool.

When I reached the cultivated land I found a group of men
waiting for me. They had heard the kakar and sambur and

128 Man-eaters of Kumaon

were very disappointed that I had not seen the tiger, but cheered
up when I told them I had great hopes for the morrow.

During the night a dust-storm came on, followed by heavy
rain, and I found to my discomfort that the roof of the hut
was very porous. However, I eventually found a spot where
it was leaking less than in others, dragged my camp bed to
it and continued my sleep. It was a brilliantly clear morning
when I awoke; the rain had washed the heat haze and dust
out of the atmosphere, and every leaf and blade of grass was
glistering in the newly risen sun.

Hitherto I had visited the nearer buffalo first, but this morn-
ing I had an urge to reverse the daily procedure, and after
instructing my men to wait until the sun was well up and then
go to feed and water the nearer buffalo, I set off with high
hopes down the Chaknakl road; having first cleaned and oiled
my 450/400 rifle a very efficient weapon, and a good and
faithful friend of many years' standing.

The overhanging rock that I passed with such trouble the
previous evening did not give me a moment's uneasiness now,
and after passing it I started looking for tracks, for the rain had
softened the surface of the road. I saw nothing however until
I came to the damp place on the road, which, as I have said,
was on the near side of the ridge and close to the pool where the
buffalo was tied. Here in the soft earth I found the pug marks
of the tiger, made before the storm had come on, and going in
the direction of the ridge. Close to this spot there is a rock
about three feet high, on the khud side of the road. On the
previous occasions that I had stalked down the road I had
found that by standing on this rock I could look over a hump
in the road and see the buffalo where it was tied forty yards
away. When I now climbed on to the rock and slowly raised
my head, I found that the buffalo had gone. This discovery

The Mohan Man-eater 129

was as disconcerting as it was inexplicable. To prevent the*
tiger from carrying the buffalo away to some distant part of
the jungle, where the only method of getting a shot would
have been by sitting up on the ground or in a tree a hopeless
proceeding with my throat in the condition it was in I had
used four thicknesses of strong one-inch-thick hemp rope, and
even so the tiger had got away with the kill.

I was wearing the thinnest of rubber-soled shoes, and very
silently I approached the sapling to which the buffalo had been
tied and examined the ground. The buffalo had been killed
before the storm, but had been carried away after the rain had
stopped, without any portion of it having been eaten. Three
of the ropes I had twisted together had been gnawed through,
and the fourth had been broken. Tigers do not usually gnaw
through ropes; however, this one had done so, and had carried
off the kill down the hill facing Mohan. My plans had been
badly upset, but very fortunately the rain had come to my
assistance. The thick carpet of dead leaves which the day before
had been as dry as tinder were now wet and pliable, and pro-
vided I made no mistakes, the pains the tiger had been to in
getting away with the kill might yet prove his undoing.

When entering a jungle in which rapid shooting might at
any moment become necessary, I never feel happy until I have
reassured myself that my rifle is loaded. To pull a trigger in
an emergency and wake up in the Happy Hunting Grounds
or elsewhere because one had omitted to load a weapon, would
be one of those acts of carelessness for which no excuse could
be found; so though I knew I had loaded my rifle before I came
to the overhanging rock, I now opened it and extracted the
cartridges. I changed one that was discoloured and dented,
and after moving the safety-catch up and down several times
to make sure it was working smoothly I have never carried a
cocked weapon I set off to follow the drag.

This word 'drag', when it is used to describe the mark left

130 Man-eaters of Kumaon

on the ground by a tiger when it is moving its kill from one
place to another, is misleading, for a tiger when taking its kill
any distance (I have seen a tiger cany a full-grown cow for four
miles) does not drag it, it carries it; and if the kill is too heavy
to be carried, it is left. The drag is distinct or faint according
to the size of the animal that is being carried, and the manner
in which it is being held. For instance, assuming the kill is a
sambur and the tiger is holding it by the neck the hind quarters
will trail on the ground leaving a distinct drag mark. On the other
hand, if the sambur is being held by the middle of the back,
there may be a faint drag mark, or there may be none at all.
In the present case the tiger was carrying the buffalo by the
neck, and the hind quarters trailing on the ground were leaving
a drag mark it was easy to follow. For a hundred yards the
tiger went diagonally across the face of the hill until he came to
a steep clay bank. In attempting to cross this bank he had
slipped and relinquished his hold of the kill, which had rolled
down the hill for thirty or forty yards until it had fetched up
against a tree. On recovering the kill the tiger picked it up by
the back, and from now on only one leg occasionally touched
the ground, leaving a faint drag mark, which nevertheless,
owing to the hillside being carpeted with bracken, was not
very difficult to follow. In his fall the tiger had lost direction,
and he now appeared to be undecided where to take the kill.
First he went a couple of hundred yards to the right, then a
hundred yards straight down the hill through a dense patch of
ringals (stunted bamboo). After forcing his way with consider-
able difficulty through the ringals he turned to the left and went
diagonally across the hill for a few hundred yards until he came
to a great rock, to the right of which he skirted. This rock
was flush with the ground on the approach side, and, rising
gently for twenty feet, appeared to project out over a hollow
or dell of considerable extent. If there was a cave or recess
under the projection, it would be a very likely place for the

The Mohan Man-eater 131

tiger to have taken his kill to, so leaving the drag I stepped on
to the rock and moved forward very slowly, examining every
yard of ground below, and on either side of me, as it came into
view. On reaching the end of the projection and looking over
I was disappointed to find that the hill came up steeply to meet
the rock, and that there was no cave or recess under it as I
had expected there would be.

As the point of the rock offered a good view of the dell and
of the surrounding jungle and was comparatively safe from
an attack from the man-eater I sat down; and as I did so, I
caught sight of a red and white object in a dense patch of short
undergrowth, forty or fifty yards directly below me. When one
is looking for a tiger in heavy jungle everything red that
catches the eye is immediately taken for the tiger, and here, not
only could I see the red of the tiger, but I could also see his
stripes. For a long minute I watched the object intently, and
then, as the face you are told to look for in a freak picture
suddenly resolves itself, I saw that the object I was looking at
was the kill, and not the tiger; the red was blood where he had
recently been eating, and the stripes were the ribs from which
he had torn away the skin. I was thankful for having held my
fire for that long minute, for in a somewhat similar case a friend
of mine ruined his chance of bagging a very fine tiger by putting
two bullets into a kill over which he had intended sitting;
fortunately he was a good shot, and the two men whom he had
sent out in advance to find the kill and put up a machan over
it, and who were, at the time he fired, standing near the kill
screened by a bush, escaped injury.

When a tiger that has not been disturbed leaves his kill out
in the open, it can be assumed that he is lying up close at hand
to guard the kill from vultures and other scavengers, and the
fact that I could not see the tiger did not mean that he was
not lying somewhere close by in the dense undergrowth.

Tigers are troubled by flies and do not lie long in one

132 Man-eaters of Kumaon

position, so I decided to remain where I was and watch for
movement; but hardly had I come to this decision, when I felt
an irritation in my throat. I had not quite recovered from my
attack of laryngitis and the irritation grew rapidly worse until
it became imperative for me to cough. The usual methods one
employs on these occasions, whether in church or the jungle,
such as holding the breath and swallowing hard, gave no relief
until it became a case of cough, or burst; and in desperation I
tried to relieve my throat by giving the alarm-call of the langur.
Sounds are difficult to translate into words and for those of you
who are not acquainted with our jungles I would try to describe
this alarm-call, which can be heard for half a mile, as khok,
khok, khofy, repeated again and again at short intervals, and
ending up with khokorror. All langurs do not call at tigers, but
the ones in our hills certainly do, and as this tiger had -probably
heard the call every day of his life it was the one sound I could
make to which he would not pay the slightest attention. My
rendering of the call in this emergency did not sound very con-
vincing, but it had the desired effect of removing the irritation
from my throat.

For half an hour thereafter I continued to sit on the rock,
watching for movement and listening for news from the jungle
folk, and when I had satisfied myself that the tiger was not
anywhere within my range of vision, I got off the rock, and,
moving with the utmost caution, went down to the kill.

VI

I regret I am not able to tell you what weight of flesh a
full-grown tiger can consume at a meal, but you will have
some idea of his capacity when I tell you he can eat a sambur
in two days, and a buffalo in three, leaving possibly a small
snack for the fourth day.

The buffalo I had tied up was not full-grown but he was
by no means a small animal, and the tiger had eaten

The Mohan Man-eater 133

approximately half of him. With a meal of that dimension
inside of him I felt sure he had not gone far, and as the ground
was still wet, and would remain so for another hour or two, I
decided to find out in what direction he had gone, and if pos-
sible, stalk him.

There was a confusion of tracks near the kill but by going
round in widening circles I found the track the tiger had made
when leaving. Soft-footed animals are a little more difficult to
track than hard-footed ones, yet after long years of experience
tracking needs as little effort as a gun dog exerts when following
a scent. As silently and as slowly as a shadow I took up the
track, knowing that the tiger would be close at hand. When
I had gone a hundred yards I came on a flat bit w of ground,
twenty feet square, and carpeted with that variety of short soft
grass that has highly scented roots; on this grass the tiger had
lain, the imprint of his body being clearly visible.

As I was looking at the imprint and guessing at the size of
the animal that had made it, I saw some of the blades of grass
that had been crushed down, spring erect. This indicated that
the tiger had been gone only a minute or so.

You will have some idea of the lay-out when I tell you
that the tiger had brought the kill down from the north, and
on leaving it had gone west, and that the rock on which I had
sat, the kill, and the spot where I was now standing, formed
the points of a triangle, one side of which was forty yards, and
the other two sides a hundred yards long.

My first thought on seeing the grass spring erect was that
the tiger had seen me and moved off, but this I soon found
was not likely, for neither the rock nor the kill was visible
from the grass plot, and that he had not seen me and moved
after I had taken up his track I was quite certain. Why then
had he left his comfortable bed and gone away? The sun
shining on the back of my neck provided the answer. It was
now nine o'clock of an unpleasantly hot May morning, and a

134 Man-eaters of Kumaon

glance at the sun and the tree-tops over which it had come
showed that it had been shining on the grass for ten minutes.
The tiger had evidently found it too hot, and gone away a few
minutes before my arrival to look for a shady spot.

I have told you that the grass plot was twenty feet square.
On the far side to that from which I had approached there was
a fallen tree, lying north and south. This tree was about four
feet in diameter, and as it was lying along the edge of the grass
plot in the middle of which I was standing, it was ten feet away
from me. The root end of the tree was resting on the hillside,
which here went up steeply and was overgrown with brushwood,
and the branch end (which had been snapped off when the tree
had fallen) was projecting out over the hillside. Beyond the
tree the hill appeared to be more or less perpendicular, and
running across the face of it was a narrow ledge of rock, which
disappeared into dense jungle thirty yards further on.

If my surmise, that the sun had been the cause of the tiger
changing his position, was correct, there was no more suitable
place than the lee of the tree for him to have taken shelter in,
and the only way of satisfying myself on this point was, to walk
up to the tree and look over. Here a picture seen long years
ago in Punch flashed into memory. The picture was of a lone
sportsman who had gone out to hunt lions and who on glancing
up, on to the rock he was passing, looked straight into the
grinning face of the most enormous lion in Africa. Underneath
the picture was written, ' When you go out looking for a lion,
be quite sure that you want to see him'. True, there would
be this small difference, that whereas my friend in Africa looked
up into the lion's face, I would look down into the tiger's;
otherwise the two cases assuming that the tiger was on the far
side of the tree would be very similar.

Slipping my feet forward an inch at a time on the soft grass,
I now started to approach the tree, and had covered about
half the distance that separated me from it when I caught sight

The Mohan Man-eater 135

of a black-and-yellow object about three inches long on the
rocky ledge, which I now saw was a well-used game path. For
a long minute I stared at this motionless object, until I was
convinced that it was the tip of the tiger's tail. If the tail was
pointing away from me the head must obviously be towards
me, and as the ledge was only some two feet wide, the tiger
could only be crouching down and waiting to spring the moment
my head appeared over the bole of the tree. The tip of the
tail was twenty feet from me, and allowing eight feet for the
tiger's length while crouching, his head would be twelve feet
away. But I should have to approach much nearer before I
should be able to see enough of his body to get in a crippling
shot, and a crippling shot it would have to be if I wanted to
leave on my feet. And now, for the first time in my life, I
regretted my habit of carrying an uncocked rifle. The safety-
catch of my 450/400 makes a very distinct click when thrown
off, and to make any sound now would either bring the tiger
right on top of me, or send him straight down the steep hillside
without any possibility of my getting in a shot.

Inch by inch I again started to creep forward, until the whole
of the tail, and after it the hind quarters, came into view. When
I saw the hind quarters, I could have shouted with delight, for
they showed that the tiger was not crouching and ready to
spring, but was lying down. As there was only room for his
body on the two-foot-wide ledge, he had stretched his hind legs
out and was resting them on the upper branches of an oak
sapling growing up the face of the almost perpendicular hillside.
Another foot forward and his belly came into view, and from the
regular way in which it was heaving up and down I knew that he
was asleep. Less slowly now I moved forward, until his shoul-
der, and then his whole length, was exposed to my view. The
back of his head was resting on the edge of the grass plot, which
extended for three or four feet beyond the fallen tree; his eyes
were fast shut, and his nose was pointing to heaven.

136 Man-eaters of Kumaon

Aligning the sights of the rifle on his forehead I pressed the
trigger and, while maintaining a steady pressure on it, pushed
up the safety-catch. I had no idea how this reversal of the
usual method of discharging a rifle would work, but it did work;
and when the heavy bullet at that short range crashed into
his forehead not so much as a quiver went through his body.
His tail remained stretched straight out; his hind legs continued
to rest on the upper branches of the sapling; and his nose still
pointed to heaven. Nor did his position change in the slightest
when I sent a second, and quite unnecessary, bullet to follow
the first. The only change noticeable was that his stomach had
stopped heaving up and down, and that blood was trickling
down his forehead from two surprisingly small holes.

I do not know how the close proximity of a tiger reacts on
others, but me it always leaves with a breathless feeling due
possibly as much to fear as to excitement and a desire for a
little rest. I sat down on the fallen tree and lit the cigarette
I had denied myself from the day my throat had got bad, and
allowed my thoughts to wander. Any task well accomplished
gives satisfaction, and the one just completed was no exception.
The reason for my presence at that spot was the destruction of
,the man-eater, and from the time I had left the road two hours
previously right up to the moment I pushed up the safety-catch
everything including the langur call had worked smoothly
and without a single fault. In this there was great satisfaction,
the kind of satisfaction I imagine an author must feel when he
writes FINIS to the plot that, stage by stage, has unfolded itself
just as he desired it to. In my case, however, the finish had
not been satisfactory, for I had killed the animal, that was
lying five feet from me, in his sleep.

My personal feelings in the matter are I know of little interest
.to others, but it occurs to me that possibly you also might think
and in that case I should like to put the

arguments before you that I used on myself, in the hope that

The Mohan Man-eater 137

you will find tlfem more satisfactory than I did. These argu-
ments were~"(6) ihe tiger was a man-eater that was better dead
than alive, (bf therefore it made no difference whether he was
awake or asleep when killed, and (of that had I walked away
when I saw his belly heaving up and down I should have been
morally responsible for the deaths of all the human beings he
killed thereafter. All good and sound arguments, you will
admit, for my having acted as I did; but the regret remains
that through fear of the consequences to myself, or fear of
losing the only chance I might ever get, or possibly a com-
bination of the two, I did not awaken the sleeping animal and
give him a sporting chance.

The tiger was dead, and if my trophy was to be saved from
falling into the valley below and rumeJrit was advisable to get
him off the ledge with as little delay as possible. Leaning the
rifle, for which I had no further use, against the fallen tree,
I climbed up to the road and, once round the corner near the
cultivated land, I cupped my hands and sent a cooee echoing
over the hills and valleys. I had no occasion to repeat the call,
for my men had heard my two shots when returning from
attending to the first buffalo and had run back to the hut to
collect as many villagers as were within calling distance. Now,
on hearing my cooee, the whole crowd came helter-skelter down
the road to meet me.

When stout ropes and an axe had been procured I took the
crowd back with me, and after I had secured the ropes round
the tiger, willing hands half carried and half dragged him off
the ledge and over the fallen tree, on to the plot of grass. Here
I would have skinned him, but the villagers begged me not to
do so, saying that the women and children of Kartkanoula and
the adjoining villages would be very disappointed if they were
not given an opportunity of seeing the tiger with their own
eyes and satisfying themselves tha