If you go to a zoo and watch the greatest of all beasts of prey pacing, loose-limbed and lazy-looking, his yawn will reveal the teeth which can kill a buffalo with a single bite. You will see him gathering his limbs and leaping onto a raised platform. If you stand by his cage and watch for a while, you will grow thankful that man-eating tigers do not prowl in our countryside.
In India, where tigers have their homes, one of them will sometimes become a man-eater. This change from its natural diet of buffalo and deer is always forced on the beast by an accident to its jaw or limbs. Nevertheless, whatever the accident, the tiger will no more make the wild charge, the perfect leap, the great bite at the neck of its prey. Lame or maimed, he turns for food to the slow-moving, weak human beings.
One such tiger can terrorise an area of hundreds of square kilometers as it wanders over the lands that make its domain, snatching a man here, a woman there, a child somewhere else. In time, the killer gets bolder and more cunning, seizing its prey by night or day and avoiding traps and hunters as though possessed with a charm. To combat such monsters, men learn the ways of the jungle, become experts and trail such monsters with determination over the countryside.
Such a man was Colonel 'Jim' Corbett. He knew the hills and jungles of Northern India as most people know their own backyards. He could glance at the track which you and I could not even see, and tell whether the tiger which made it was young or older, male or female, wounded or sound. He could trace a tiger's passage through the jungle by listening to the alarm calls of a deer, monkey and bird; and could tell from crushed grass that a tiger had stepped there three minutes before.
He also had a sixth sense which warned him of danger. One day, he was following up a trail when this uncanny sense brought him up with a jerk. He knew that a man-eating tiger had its eyes on him and that it lay hidden only a few metres away.
6 Staying stock-still, he searched carefully around. Before him, rose a steep hillside. Below this, there was a valley, wooded and filled with the warm wild-life of India. Against the hillside, under a bank of fern, lay the carcass of a buffalo. That was the end of the trail he had followed, for on the previous night the man-eating tiger he had been hunting for weeks had killed and carried off a captive buffalo. There lay the buffalo, carried there by the tiger, and nearby, so his sixth sense warned him, the tiger lay hidden, watching him. Jim Corbett gazed intently, waiting for a move.
7 In a few minutes, though it must have seemed like hours, the bushes stirred. The tiger broke out of its hide and went bounding up the hillside. Corbett threw up his rifle and took a quick shot at the racing, bouncing target. The tiger fell backwards, roaring. Over and over it tumbled down the hillside, still roaring, and Jim Corbett's mind raced, wondering what he would do when it landed at his feet.
8 Before it had reached half-way to him, the animal recovered, the roaring stopped and, as though nothing had happened, it dashed on up the hill and out of sight. Corbett found later that his bullet had made a flesh-wound in the leg, then ricocheted off a rock and smashed into the tiger's jaw, hurting it, though without doing much harm. At the time, he only realised that the wound was slight and concluded that the tiger would make off into the hills; he had lost the chance of making an end of it.
9 The next morning, he again visited the kill, in the hope of picking up clues about the tiger. To his amazement, he found fresh tracks leading to and from the carcass and some of it had been eaten. Surprising though it was, the tiger had been so unimpressed by the wound that it had come back to the same spot for a meal. Jim Corbett realised that this tiger took a lot of frightening.
10 He decided to try one of the tricks learnt in half a lifetime, amid the jungles. He had discovered that if a tiger has been slightly wounded, it will not come to another tiger when it roars out its call. Why this should be, he did not know, but experience had proven it. Now, with his rifle ready, he tried to entice the tiger.
11 Filling his lungs, he gave a perfect imitation of the tiger's long, gurgling call. Immediately, from the hills, the tiger responded with its own, fierce cry. Corbett called again, and anyone listening would have sworn that a tiger was roaring out its combined challenge and invitation. Once more, it replied and Corbett tried again - and so it went on, call answering call. However, the tiger would not budge from wherever it lay hidden in the hills and Jim Corbett concluded that it was too wary to come down in broad daylight; he would have to think of something else.
12 As the tiger had already visited its kill since being shot, Corbett guessed it might try again. This would give him the chance of carrying out his old routine of sitting up at night over the kill, waiting for the tiger to come within range of his rifle - a much more difficult and dangerous task than it sounds to be; not least because the hunter must nearly always be alone - two people make too much noise and give each other too much anxiety. First, he had to find a tree. He searched with expert eye, but could find none from which he could actually see the kill. At last, he had to be satisfied with one which overlooked the miniature valley, along which he felt sure the tiger would come that night.
13 That evening, as the sun was going down, he climbed up the tree and sat on a branch about eight feet above the ground. Very soon, after he had settled himself, a langur monkey let out a shrill cry of alarm. Corbett searched the trees across the valley, trying to catch sight of the langur. It went on crying out and he soon discovered it at the top of a tree and seeming to look straight at him. He decided that the monkey had mistaken him for a leopard, for leopards are one of the monkey tribe's eternal fears. The langur continued calling until night cast its blackness over the jungle.
14 In the darkness, Corbett waited, straining eyes and ears, seeing nothing but the stars, hearing nothing but the background buzz of the night-time jungle. Suddenly, he started, senses alert, heart pounding; a stone had rolled down the hillside and struck against the base of the tree in which he was perched. Following the stone, came a soft, yet heavy, padding sound. The tiger had arrived, but not in the way he had expected; it was coming downhill, straight for his tree. A deep, angry growling sounded in his ears. Things had taken a dangerous turn.
15 Now he understood why the langur had been so worried. It had been watching the tiger, while the tiger had been watching Corbett climb up the tree. This tiger was a beast which had lost its fear of men, which before now had prowled into crowded villages at night in search of an unbarred door. This tiger had been injured the previous day, and now it was angry, pacing about the tree, growling.
16 At about three metres above the ground, Jim Corbett felt far from being safe. By standing on its hind legs, the tiger could easily grab his ankles and heave him down to a hideous death. His experience reminded him of the danger of shooting from close range at an angry tiger. Many a good hunter had perished under the claws and teeth of an animal made furious by such a shot in the dark. Yet, he could not just sit there and wait for the beast to fasten its teeth on his ankles; so, slipping the safety catch, he brought the rifle round and pushed it between his arm and his side. If the tiger should reach up now, at least it would meet the rifle first. As he made this move, a really menacing growl came from below.
17 They waited, tiger and man, like cat and mouse. Sometimes the tiger would stay silent for a while, then it would pace about the tree, growling in a deep and hair-raising fashion. At last, with a sigh of relief, Jim Corbett heard the sound of bones cracking under great teeth; the tiger was at the kill. He sat listening and waiting.
18 [The opening of this paragraph is missing: page 5 of the scan is cropped short and cuts off the top of the physical page before this point. Not reconstructed.] ...a hilltop, according to arrangements of the night before, his colleagues called out the clear 'Cooee' of the hill-folk. At this sound, the tiger broke away from its meal and Corbett at last caught sight of it, speeding up the hill.
19 Springing his limbs into action, focusing his eyes along the sights of his rifle, Jim Corbett pulled the trigger. As the bullet struck, the tiger gave a great roar, turned and charged at the tree the hunter sat in. It looked straight up at him, roared again and sprang. The rifle cracked and a bullet tore into the chest of the tiger as it hurtled in mid-air.
20 Spurn round by the force of the bullet, the tiger fell short, crashing into the tree just below Jim Corbett's feet. Off the tree, it bounced and tumbled down into the valley. The hunter heard it charge through the water, and the water was stained red. Along the valley, it staggered, crashing and splashing until, suddenly, the sounds ceased.
21 Jim Corbett climbed down the tree, massaged his cramped limbs back to life and followed the tiger's trail down the valley. His colleagues came down to see what had happened and gasped with dismay at the blood which lay thick on Corbett's clothes. He laughed and took them a little further away along the valley to see where the crafty, bold, courageous, man-eating tiger of Kanda lay dead.
Adapted from: The Wonder Book of Adventure: Hunting a Man-Eater, pages 20-25, Written by Irish David, published by Ward Lock and Company Limited, London.