Barbara Cleverly - The Palace Tiger

It was mostly standard advice about the necessity to constantly check one’s rifle and take care not to point it at other hunters but contained more useful pieces of information on the most vulnerable points of a tiger’s body and the preference of sideways or head-on presentation of target. Ever mindful of the safety of the group, Colin unsmilingly handed to each a railwayman’s whistle on a string and ordered that it should be hung around the neck. It was only to be sounded in dire emergency. ‘It’s not a toy. It’s not to be used for entertainment or pranks,’ he said stiffly. Joe noticed that he was handing out Bahadur’s whistle as he said this.

They were to approach downwind of the nullah, ceremonially making the last part of the journey on elephant back. Cameras appeared and a file of elephants duly paraded, looking majestic, their hides painted with swirling patterns in bright colours, rich velvet cloths draped about their backs and golden ornaments hanging from their foreheads.

‘Joe, Edgar! You take this one,’ Colin called and they stood on the mounting block and scrambled, one at a time, into the cane-sided howdah. Joe looked about him with delight to see the lavish equipment packed into the small space: gun racks, cartridge pockets, bottles filled with lime juice, bottles filled with tea, a sun umbrella, a spare shirt, a pair of gloves, a skinning-knife, a camera and a block of Kendal mint cake and, most puzzling in the heat of an Indian summer’s day, a large blanket.

Catching Joe’s look of surprise, ‘Bees,’ Edgar said. ‘In case of attack by. Just roll yourself up in it.’

The mahout turned to them with a grin and announced that the name of their elephant was Chumpah and she was the senior elephant in the herd. As they lurched about uncomfortably, dipping and swaying at once sideways and back, Joe concentrated on imagining the grandeur of an earlier age when a hundred of these magnificent animals would have taken part in the hunt, encircling the tiger, bringing their riders within spear shot of the beast and sometimes being leaped upon and killed. With a sharp cry and a dig behind the ear with his toes, the mahout persuaded Chumpah to move faster onward into the forest and the hunt had begun.

Standing on the fire-step counting the seconds before going over the top produced the same sort of tension. Joe licked his dried lips. He wiped his sweating hands on the seat of his trousers, one at a time. Nine o’clock and already the heat was unbearable even up here amongst the foliage. He thought of Sir George high in the Simla hills, probably sipping tea on the lawn in the shade of the deodars with a refreshing breeze knifing in from the Himalayas. He checked his rifle. He’d checked it three times in as many minutes. A section of the steel barrel which had been in full sun burned his hand. Even the rifle was overheating. He’d need gloves to handle it soon. So that was what they were for! He wondered nervously if the heat would affect its performance. Had Colin mentioned that? He looked down from his perch fifteen feet up in a tree to the south of the stream bed and tried to catch a glimpse of Edgar opposite. There was no movement from the tree cover which hid Edgar’s machan. Nor from Claude’s to his right. Colin had chosen his hide-outs well.

He refocused on the hundred or more yards separating the edges of the nullah. He saw a tapestry of golden grasses, some shifting in a breeze he could not feel, some standing spikily to attention and taller than a man’s head. With her striped coat she could be anywhere in that underbrush and they wouldn’t catch a glimpse of her until she decided to break cover. Here and there, where the grass grew less plentifully, were patches of earth, reddish sand, stretching for yards along the dried stream bed. Joe decided he only had a chance of getting the tigress in his sights — assuming she had successfully run the gauntlet of the five other guns — if she appeared in one of these gaps in the vegetation. He narrowed his eyes and looked carefully at the nearest gap, assessing its size and judging how large his target would look in the setting. Would she come creeping stealthily along like a domestic cat or would she be bounding angrily through her territory like the Queen of the Jungle that she was? He knew so little in spite of Colin’s constant coaching.

The forest was surprisingly silent. In the far distance an elephant trumpeted, even the gang of langur monkeys overhead who had at first registered a chattering protest at his presence in their tree had settled down to groom each other quietly. Joe’s ears were straining for the sounds of the beaters. Was Colin having a problem with the squad of villagers, over-eager volunteers, all anxious to settle old scores with the tigress?

He checked his wristwatch, surprised to find that he’d only been in his tree for half an hour.

A small herd of sambur wandered into sight, then seeing something it was uneasy with, one of them belled and flicked its tail, startling the others into a nervous run down the nullah. To Joe’s right a short warning call rang out — a monkey? — alerting the troupe above his head. They peered, chattering, about them, then, deciding there was no cause for alarm, settled back to their preening.

Joe knew that on many days Colin had sat up in the branches of a tree without the comfort of a machan on tiger-watch for hours on end, once overnight in the Himalayas in a downpour, a situation from which he had to be extricated, all limbs locked rigid, by his men in the morning. Joe had only been aloft for an hour and he had the benefit of a stout platform and a ladder if he needed it. Suddenly the temptation to climb down for a pee and a cigarette was almost overwhelming.

A single blast on a silver bugle released all his tension. The hunt was under way. Colin’s choreography was beginning to be played out. Distantly, voices called, sticks clashed rhythmically together and drums began to beat. The men were advancing slowly on all three sides of the funnel-shaped draw and the stage was set for the appearance of the main player. Joe’s blood was racing. She would have been alerted by the first bugle blast and would even now be starting to cover the mile separating her from the open end of the valley and freedom. Eyes fixed on the stream bed, he counted the minutes. Unless she had veered off course to climb the scree slope to the left of Bahadur’s tree she would be level with the guns at any moment. Joe listened, expecting to hear gunshots from his right. Minutes went by, the noise from the beaters grew louder but no shots rang out. Nothing from Bahadur? Nothing from Ajit Singh?

‘Oh, God!’ Joe cursed under his breath, ‘This trap’s empty! She’s not here! And we’ll have to do the whole bloody thing again somewhere else tomorrow. . or the next day!’

A single shot from Claude’s position steadied his nerves. Something was moving, then. He waited, scanning his sector.

Then she was there, in the spot where he’d looked for her. Outlined against the sandy patch on which he’d been concentrating, she stood, stealthily sniffing the air. A huge beast, gleaming red-gold and black in the harsh sunlight, she was magnificent. The monkeys above his head barked a tiger warning, dancing about with outrage and fear. A shot cracked out from Edgar and she reared on her hind legs roaring a protest. Seemingly unharmed, she swung about and plunged into the cover of the grasses. Was she wounded? Had Edgar missed? He’d fired with the tiger sideways on to him. An easy target but not the best of shots when it came to placing a killer bullet. Joe watched the waving of the grasses as she came on at a bounding run towards his tree. Swallowing nervously he tracked her as she forged forward.

‘Go for the throat,’ Colin had said. ‘Don’t try for a head shot. More difficult and tigers often survive a head wound. The throat shot’s the stopper.’ But how the hell did you shoot a tiger in the throat when you were fifteen feet above its head and it was charging straight towards you? By the laws of geometry the throat would be an impossible target if she got any nearer. With sinking heart he acknowledged that, incredibly, everyone else had missed their shots and it was up to him. Hands steady on the gun, he waited. Instinct, calculation, luck, they all played their part: suddenly she was clear of the grass, her throat a target for the duration of one more stride. He pulled the trigger. Her forward dash stopped abruptly and she stood still, looking up at him, with, he could have sworn, a slight smile on her face, then she crashed to the ground.