Jungle Byways in India

I

MY tents were pitched in an old mango grove, overlooking the wide plain that stretched down to the river bank. Behind, to the north, was a sea of white flowering elephant grass, through which emerged the tops of the various clumps of trees that formed the outliers of the great forest. To the south, covering the plain as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but coarse grass, dull yellowish-brown, sullen and forbiddinglooking even in the brilliant light of a morning of early April. Here and there bits of the river — one of the great rivers of India, snow-fed, turbid, wandering at will in its wide bed — gleamed in the sunlight. The snows were already beginning to melt on the distant Himalaya, and the plain we looked down on would soon be hidden beneath a waste of hurrying waters.

I was working at a table under the trees. The sun, not yet too hot, filtered pleasantly through the dark green foliage; the air was perfumed with the sweet fruity smell of the mango blossoms; from that part of the grove where the servants had their tents came, mellowed by distance, a hum of activity; every now and then one had a faint whiff of wood fires. I was typing furiously at a judgment in an important rent case when I heard behind me the silvery tinkle of tiny bells. I turned, to find the owner of the grove — the owner of everything in sight, and for many miles beyond — approaching with a peregrine falcon on his wrist. The usual crowd of retainers followed at a respectful distance.

‘Salaam, Raja Sahib. And how is your general health?’

‘Very good, by the favor of your honor.’

‘Be good enough to place the effulgence of your glory,’ and I pointed to a chair.

We rattled through the customary formalities; the stilted Persian phrases that politeness prescribed seemed more than usually incongruous. The Raja was in worn jodhpurs, stained and torn from many incidents of field and flood; his shooting coat had once been mainly green; it was now a medley of colors, with dark brown bloodstains here and there, and hanging tatters where the jungle thorns had torn it. But it was eminently workmanlike, and it had the merit of invisibility against almost any background likely to be encountered. The long leather guard on his left wrist and forearm was rough with claw marks; on it perched the falcon, hooded. A saucy little aigrette of bright colors quivered as the bird moved its head.

‘It is a morning for hawking, Sahib. And this one is a very king among falcons. Stop all that’ — he waved a plump hand toward my table — ‘and come and see my bird at work.’

‘I have got to get this off by the runner in time for the mid-day train at Pullanpore.’

‘It is an affair of half an hour. And never was there such a bird.’ He flicked off the hood; the falcon moved uneasily on its perch, and spread out its wings. Dark brown, dappled with black; keen, fierce, yellow-circled eyes — eyes ‘that held no memories,’ that stared boldly and fixedly; the great wings overlapped behind the body; one had an instant impression of race, of breeding, of supreme fitness for the business of killing, of aloofness and complete self-absorption. The powerful body lines flowed smoothly, in graceful and satisfying curves, from the proud head to the hooked talons. The hood was slipped on again with a faint click, and the falcon became quiet on its perch.

‘ Yes — a very king among birds. Never does he miss his kill. And he has been kept hungry for this morning’s work. Come, Sahib; this is something one does not see every day: it is a thing of wonder.’

II

We strolled off slowly to the plain in front.

‘What are we searching for, Raja Sahib?’

‘Ibis. They are best.’

He was taciturn and preoccupied now, his quick beady eyes searching right and left in the area — thinly grassed — that we traversed. Here and there a blue jay fluttered off excitedly; doves flickered round the sparse acacia trees; once or twice a peacock rose lumberingly a hundred yards or so off, squawking with alarm. But the Raja cared for none of these things.

We walked slowly on; and then, with a grunt of satisfaction, he took me by the arm. ‘Now it has been met with! What is that?’ Less than a hundred yards off, I saw perhaps ten or twelve ibises in a bare patch among the grass.

The hood was flicked off, the jesses released, and the falcon thrown into the air, in the general direction of the ibises. It swept toward them, flying low over the grass with powerful strokes that seemed curiously unhurried. The ibises rose almost at once; and, crowded together, began to beat upward flurriedly. The falcon swept round them, in wide circles, making no effort to gain height, but shepherding the wisp of birds steadily upward. They rose rapidly into the pale blue sky: the ibises with short, jerky, almost convulsive wing movements; the falcon sweeping round in circles with the case and precision of a machine. Up and up they went, and one’s eyes blinked in the strong light.

One of the Raja’s hunters standing beside me spoke: ‘Now they are making words among themselves. They are making the decision.’

‘What decision?’ I asked.

‘It is always thus. On the way up, they make words among themselves. One of them must die: now they are deciding which.’ He peered into the sky absorbedly, and went on: ‘Never is there doubt or hesitation. It is a decision. It is carried out. Always is it so. I have seen it a hundred times.’

We stood, necks craned back, eyes shaded with cupped hands, staring almost vertically upward at the rapidly rising birds. The falcon was swinging round, as steady and smooth and powerful as the head of a connecting rod, driving the ibises higher and higher. As we peered with half-closed eyes, it. suddenly narrowed its circle and then shot upward; simultaneously, one of the ibises detached itself from the flock of birds and flew away, dropping almost vertically. The falcon shot downward at once.

They were perhaps twelve or fifteen hundred feet up, and it was difficult to follow exactly what happened. It seemed, however, that the falcon was falling with wings only half extended; and that every now and then it aided the falling motion with powerful sweeps of the full wings. Whatever the mechanism, it was clear that the falcon was covering the distance at almost double the speed of the ibis. The little dots — they were hardly more — rapidly closed; then, when they seemed one, the eye caught an awkward, convulsive movement. I thought I could see the outstretched neck of the ibis pointing skyward; the wings appeared crumpled and helpless; but almost instantaneously one realized that the falcon had missed its kill; that the ibis, unharmed, was off again in another direction, and that the falcon was recovering for a new attack in one smooth, exquisite loop that kept most of the advantage of its downward speed.

The whole manœuvre was over in less than half a second. Then the downward rush continued; the dots — bigger now, and more clearly seen — merged again; and an instant later I saw the falcon, with its wings spread to the fullest extent, holding the ibis in its talons. From the moment of the kill, the falcon did not beat its wings, but kept them extended, checking the downward rush; and it came quite slowly to earth, lurching heavily from side to side as the air filled, and spilled from, each wing in turn.

I asked the Raja’s shikari how the kill was actually effected. He told me that the falcon, stooping to a quarry, took it with the thick of its wing, just a little below the head of the bird attacked. The neck was usually broken immediately by the force of the blow. If that failed, — and it did not often fail, he said, — then the falcon seized the quarry in its talons, and killed by striking its curved beak into the brain.

We ran through the tussocky grass to the point, less than three hundred yards away, where the falcon had come to earth. When I arrived, I found it with the ibis firmly held in its talons; the breast was already half eaten, and the bird was rending fiercely at the warm flesh. Its keeper knelt down, picked off little morsels of the meat, rolled them into pellets in his fingers, with small feathers he plucked from the breast, and offered them to the falcon — which seemed to prefer them to the neat meat. It was soon gorged; the hood was slipped on again; and within the half hour I was back at my table in the mango grove, with the Raja pouring out lyrical rhapsodies to his ‘king of birds.’

III

The next morning, about six o’clock, my orderly informed me, as I worked at my files in the open, that ‘a leopard had been brought for inspection.’ Seated, fifty yards off, were two obvious ‘junglies.’ I strolled toward them, and found that they had traveled all night with an exceptionally large leopard, beautifully marked, hung from a long bamboo pole. The men were banjaras — gypsies. I asked them how they had killed the beast; it bore no mark that I could detect.

‘We were asked to slay it, and were offered four annas [say eight cents] if we did. It had been killing the goats and calves of the village we happened to be near. But we knew, too, that the Presence would give us ten rupees from the Government. Will your honor pay us the ten rupees?’

‘How did you kill it?’

‘We killed it in the usual manner, the manner of our caste.’ They seemed disinclined to enlarge on this, for further questions merely led to more evasive replies.

‘Good. You won’t tell me how you killed it. You may have picked it up, dead, in the jungle. I pay no reward.’

‘Nay, Sahib. I speak straight words. I killed it — I alone; but my father’s sister’s son gave aid in bringing it here.’

‘And how did you kill? I pay no reward unless you tell me.’

‘Good. I shall speak a true word. I asked the man who wished that the leopard should be killed what its customs were. He told me. It came from the big jungle; pressing itself down, pressing itself down, all the time, it came along a very shallow watercourse to the grazing grounds near the village. There it went with great care from one patch of grass to another, watching the goats and calves, and ever getting nearer. If anything moved, it flattened out. When a chance came — and it was very patient — it killed. If men came, it bolted back to the big jungle. But it did not eat fear at any time. I prepared my bow, and three arrows. The arrows were poisoned. I poisoned them.’

‘How?’ But that, despite many efforts, he would not tell me. It was, he said, a secret of the caste; he would never tell that.

‘Good. Speak.’

‘I waited, hidden in a tuft of grass, for the leopard. I waited many hours, day after day, at the right times, and at last he came. At twenty paces I gave the arrow, and he ate a wound in his flank. Then he did according to custom in such cases: he bounded to the nearest patch of grass and walked round and round, biting sometimes at the arrow, till he lay down, tired. Then I came out of my tuft with great carefulness, and went back to my people. The next morning, very early, I picked up the leopard, dead.’

‘Do you kill other animals like that?’

‘Without doubt. One kills and eats. One time I killed a tiger like that: I gave the arrow at fifteen paces.’

‘Is there no fear of the poison?’

‘There is no fear. The flesh near the point of the arrow gets black; that is cut away; the rest is very good.’

They got their ten rupees. The skin was useless, for the leopard had been carried in a burning sun all day, and then through the night. The body was already swollen.

That was one of the many times I tried to discover the secret of the poisoned arrows — of the effectiveness of which there can be no possible doubt. And always I had failed. It was years before I got any information on the point, and it finally came from a pasi — one of the thief caste — who considered himself under a quite special obligation to me. Here is the prescription as I got it: —

‘You choose a day, in the middle of the hot days, when the air is still and no wind strikes. Aou seek tall elephant grass, in flower, and you look for a stem that shakes when all else is still. This is only met with in patches in the big jungle, far from any places where men live. The heat is great; the forest is still; here and there, after much searching, you may find a stem that shakes of itself. Dig up the root, and there you will find little things like the roots of a yam. You grind them with water, and tip your arrow. And where that arrow strikes, it kills.’

I often looked for the stems of elephant grass, in flower, that quivered when all else was still; but I never found them.

IV

Near the end of a long day of unsuccessful search after big game, Landale and I found ourselves approaching a deep, long depression which formed part of the old bed of the great river — now ten miles or more away. Landale desired mightily to fire ‘at something’; and since this particular kund, as such depressions are usually called, generally held at least one large crocodile, I stopped the elephants at a suitable distance and sent one of the shikaris forward to reconnoitre.

He came back in a few minutes with the report that a very large crocodile was sunning itself, plastered against a steep muddy slope on the edge of the kund. It was arranged that Landale and I should stalk it together; that he should take the shot; and that I should fire immediately afterward so as to prevent the crocodile, if possible, from slipping into the water.

Everything worked at first ‘according to plan.’ Landale had an easy shot at less than seventy yards, and hit the massive beast in the neck with a .500 bullet; my shot was necessarily hasty, but I got the crocodile close to the spine, and between the shoulders, with a split .450 cordite express bullet. The crocodile was of course mortally wounded, and with any reasonable luck it would have been paralyzed and recoverable; but, as so often happens, it had just strength enough, aided by the steep and slippery slope, to slip into the water and disappear.

Landale’s sorrow rose to high heaven. So far he had nothing whatever to show for ten hard days’ work; could nothing be done?

We clustered under the sparse shade of the shisham trees and discussed the possibilities amicably, the shikaris and mahouts taking a notable part. No one was really interested except Landale; a crocodile, however big, was, after all, very mean game; but everyone was sympathetic, and I was tolerant of a feeling, and of hopes, that at some time or other all of us had known or cherished. So, at long last, — and with considerable misgivings on the part of several of us, — it was decided to send one of the elephants into the pool to see whether it could find the dead crocodile, and perhaps work it gradually ashore. The water was about seven feet deep, but the bottom was known to be firm and even.

Moti Piyari slid down the steep bank with her haunches well under her. She stopped herself neatly on the little ledge near the kund, prospecting gingerly with her trunk as to the stability of the edge, and slowly entered the water. She strolled about casually, with the water lapping halfway up her great side, searching with her feet. No one was paying much attention to her when we heard a muffled ‘ bruuump,’ — her trunk was in the water, — and before I had time to turn my head I heard the rush of her body through the water as she tore for the bank.

She came out very hurriedly, limping badly. I slipped down the trunk of my elephant, and met her as she reached the high ground on which we stood. The nail on her off forefoot had been half bitten and half torn out, apparently by the root — a nail bigger than the back of one’s hand. She was obviously in great pain, and stood silently, her wounded foot tilted up on the heel, her trunk relaxed and resting on the ground, her body braced back and quivering. The wound was so contused that there was very little bleeding. One could see her fiery little eye glowing; and I realized, from her attitude and manner, the intense pain she was suffering. Her mahout did his best, and murmured endearments. Then he turned to me.

‘Sahib. She wants her friend.’

I looked at the group of elephants. ‘Where is Maulia?’

It appeared that Maulia, whose mahout knew that there would be nothing doing for some time, had been taken to a considerable distance to feed on a pipal tree spotted as they came along; work was practically over for the day.

‘Call her at once.’

One of the mahouts, cupping his hands round his mouth, sent out the cry, almost unintelligible near by, that filters through the long distances and comes out clear and sharp a mile or more away. Moti Piyari — the ‘beloved pearl’ — had been badly hurt, and wanted her friend ‘in one breath.’ Almost at once, thin and clear, came the reply: she was coming with much haste.

I picked her up soon after, striding along with her great legs working like huge pistons, thundering across the level plain at top speed. She crashed through some young trees near where we stood, and went straight to her friend. Trunk rustled dryly against trunk; Maulia rubbed her forehead gently against Moti Piyari’s great shoulder; there were little murmurs and tiny squeals, gentle pressures, gurgles. Maulia poured out her sympathy in generous measure; and Moti Piyari, little by little, relaxed. The pig eye was less fiery; the bunched muscles softened.

I left them talking to one another, and prepared a suitable solution of carbolic acid. After perhaps half an hour, Moti Piyari’s mahout explained to her that the sahib would treat her wound; it would hurt; but it was all for her good. She must stand quiet; she was his own daughter, and would understand. She did.

I washed the wound gently, and then treated it with the carbolic. She squealed a little, despite Maulia’s encouragements, but the sting was momentary only. We tore up one of the pad coverings, soaked dry grass with the carbolic solution and bound it over my handkerchief on the wound, and finally dispatched Moti Piyari and her friend to the nearest Government dispensary, about eight miles off, with a note in Hindustani as to the treatment to be given her. Two other elephants were sent with them to help with fodder, and to carry her pad and equipment. Moti Piyari had the distinction of being an ‘out-patient,’ borne on the Government books, for several weeks, during which time she enjoyed the uninterrupted society of Maulia.

When I next saw her, some four months later, she had, to my very great satisfaction, a brand-new and gleaming white nail.