Various - McClure\'s Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908

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Miss Dorn laughed again and looked gratefully at him.

"Oh, I'm so glad I met you!" she said quite frankly--and then,
mischievously: "I'll ask my uncle to forgive you, if you like."

"Your uncle!"

"Yes, the old gentleman with the--er--spinach."

If Mr. Masterson was simulating embarrassment, he did it very
cleverly: he started to say something once or twice, changed his mind
confusedly, and suddenly, putting the shuffleboard stick under his
arm, began to imitate a guitar.

Miss Dorn applauded. "Splendid! You should play in the orchestra."

"Thank you." He smiled gratefully. "Listen; this is a bassoon. I have
to make a funny face when I do it."

Miss Dorn clapped her hands. "Great!" she cried. "Oh, simply great!"

"A flute," introduced Mr. Masterson.

Miss Marcia chortled. "That's a funnier face than the last," she said.

"A cello."

"Good!"

"A violin," he announced.

"Not so good"; she smiled in appreciative criticism.

"I'll have to practise up on it. But listen to this. I'm all right on
the cornet."

It did sound like a cornet, even to the tremolo and the tonguing.
People were looking up from their steamer-chairs now, and one or two
pedestrians had gathered about; Mr. Masterson had an appreciative
audience. Encouraged, he essayed another effort. He wrinkled his
comical face and pursed up his lips, starting three or four times, and
shaking his head at his failures. The others were watching him much as
they would a catherine-wheel that refused to ignite. At last he
brought forth a puny little sound.

"I really don't know," observed the amateur entertainer blandly, "what
that is."

Every one burst into roars, and it was at this moment that the Admiral
hove in sight round the corner of the deck-house. When Miss Dorn
looked up, Mr. Masterson was gone; the crowd, still laughing, was
dwindling; and there stood her uncle. He had on what she termed his
"quarter-deck expression." Before he could speak she had taken him by
the arm.

[Illustration: "HE COULD HEAR THE CRASH, SEE THE GREAT BOW SINKING"]

"Where have you been, Nuncky dear?" she inquired most sweetly.

"Looking for you, my dear Marcia."

"For two whole days?"

"Well--er--yesterday I--er--thought you'd better be left alone,
and--er--where did you meet that young man?"

"Oh, Bertha Sands introduced him--he's a dear! You came just a minute
too late." Miss Dorn laughed and squeezed her uncle's arm. "He's _so_
amusing. You'd _love_ to meet him!"

"That silly ass!" grunted Admiral Paulding. "Not much. He makes my toe
itch! I've got a good name for him--'the smoke-room pest.' He's always
doing card tricks under your unwilling nose, pretending to sit on
somebody's hat, upsetting the dominos! If he can get a laugh out of a
waiter, he's perfectly satisfied. I squelched him the other day, I can
tell you!"

"What did you do?" Miss Marcia asked the question with mock
seriousness.

"Never mind; but I taught him a lesson. Marcia, my dear, you do pick
up the most peculiar acquaintances."

"But, really, my dear Nuncky, he's so clever, so quick at
repartee--m--m--I'd be afraid! Tell me how you did it."

"Never mind how; but let me tell you this! That young man would never
say anything sensible if he could help it, and never do anything
useful, even by accident! And I think that you, my dear Marcia----"

"It's been a perfectly lovely day," remarked Miss Dorn abstractedly.

II

As if in sheer perversity, the weather changed early in the evening,
and the night that followed was punctuated regularly by the blast of
the fog-whistle. The next day broke thick and damp, with a wall of
impenetrable mist shadowing the great vessel to half her length. Over
the tall sides the greasy green of the water could just be seen moving
by. The masts and funnels disappeared irregularly overhead. The fog
clung to everything; it rimed the rugs and capes of the passengers who
feared the close air of the 'tween-decks and lay recumbent in the
steamer-chairs, and it clung in little pearls to Miss Marcia Dorn's
curly front hair, that seemed to curl all the tighter for the wetting.

With Mr. Victor Masterson at her side, she was walking up and down the
hurricane-deck. His appearance was not quite so spruce or so comical
this morning; he looked as if he had been dipped overboard. He still
disdained a hat, and his hair was plastered over his forehead in an
uneven, scraggly bang. The weather seemed also to have dampened his
spirits. Miss Dorn found it difficult to lead him away from serious
subjects; his ideas on mental telepathy did not amuse her, nor the
fact that he was a fatalist.

"Oh, I wish you'd do something to make me laugh," she broke in
suddenly.

"Are you ticklish?" inquired the Silly Ass quite soberly.

Miss Dorn could not help but titter; she was not at all put out.

"There!" said Mr. Masterson. "Now, you see, I have done it! Please
thank me. Now let me go on. You know, there is no doubt that the mind
of one person when thinking of----"

"Oh, don't let's think!" Miss Dorn leaned back against the rail, half
hidden from the gangway. "Isn't it dreary," she said, "this weather?
And look at those people all stretched out. I wish we could do
something to wake them up! The whole ship seems to have the
glooms--even the captain; he wouldn't speak a word to me at
breakfast."

"I could wake 'em up," said Mr. Masterson emphatically. "I could wake
the whole ship up, and the captain too, and the lootenant, and the
quartermaster, and the squingerneer, and the crew of the _Nancy Brig_,
if I wanted to--and your Uncle Admiral Elephant here, asleep in the
steamer-chair."

"Why, sure enough, there he is!" cried Miss Dorn. "He's got the
glooms, too; he says he always gets 'em in foggy weather at sea." She
turned and touched Mr. Masterson lightly on the arm. "Wake him up!"
she said, her eyes twinkling.

"I hardly dare."

"Oh, go on! I don't believe you can. How would you do it?"

"How would I do it? Why, just this way." He crumpled his hands
together and blew between the knuckles of his thumbs a low, resonant,
gruffly humming note.

They were hidden now by the bow of the life-boat and were standing
quite close together. They noticed that the figure in the
steamer-chair nearest them had suddenly raised itself a little and
then had sat bolt upright. The old admiral, the mist in his gray
whiskers, turned one ear forward and listened attentively.

The gray wall had grown a little whiter, less opaque; they could see
now the whole length of the ship, out to the lifting stern.

"Oh, go on," tempted the girl; "do it again--louder!"

Mr. Masterson looked at her.

"Oh, _please_ do," she pleaded; "real loud. I dare you to!"

He slowly raised his hands, the thumb-knuckles to his lips again.
There sounded two deep, long-drawn, half-roaring, thrilling notes, for
all the world like steam in the cup of a great metal whistle.

Footsteps, hurried and quick, rushed overhead on the bridge. A hoarse
voice shouted orders. The quartermaster spun the wheel. Now:

"Full speed ahead, the starboard engine! Full speed astern, port!"

"Ay, ay, sir!"

There was the clank-clank of the semaphores, and suddenly two
bursting, answering blasts that hid the huge funnels in a cloud of
feathery white.

The admiral in the steamer-chair threw off his wrappings and leaped to
the rail.

A loud, anxious hail from above: "Lookout, there forward! Can you make
out anything?"

"Oh, see what I've done!" faltered the Silly Ass in a frightened
whisper.

Miss Dorn grasped his shoulder.

There had followed a sudden cry that rose in a diapason of mad fear:

"Vessel ahead! _Star_board your helm, sir! _Star_board your h-e-l-m!"

The helm was already over; the ship was swinging wide. Another quick
order. The second officer leaped again to the semaphores. The huge
fabric trembled, racking in every plate, as both engines reversed at
full speed, the screws churning and thundering astern. And now a rift
came in the encircling fog, as if it had been cut by a mighty sword.

Clear and distinct, not half a cable's length away, wallowed a great
black shape. The mighty bow swept veering past her quarter, then her
stern, and clear of it by no more than thirty yards!

Only those few on deck outside of the weather-cloth saw the sight, and
then for but an instant. Never would they forget it!

Lying low in the water, all awash from the break of her
topgallant-forecastle to the lift of her high poop-deck, the green
seas running under her bridge and about her superstructure, swayed a
great mass of iron and steel of full five thousand tons! Ship without
a soul! A wisp of a flag, upside down, still floated in her slackened
rigging; swinging falls dangled from her empty davits. Then the fog
closed in, and, as a picture on a lantern-slide fades and disappears,
she vanished and was gone!

A white-faced boy looked up into Miss Dorn's frightened eyes. His
lips moved, but made no sound.

On the bridge, the captain had grasped the second officer by the arm.
"My God! Fitzgerald, did you see that? It was the _Drachenburg_."

"Derelict and abandoned! But, by heaven, sir, _she signaled us!_"

The captain turned quickly. "Stop those engines!" he ordered hoarsely.

The tearing pulses down below ceased their beating; it was as if a
great heart had stopped! The ship, breathless at her own escape, lay
calm and quiet in the fog. The only sound was of the greasy waves
lapping her high steel flanks. Yet----

Admiral Dorn, still standing beneath the bridge, with both hands
grasping the rail, shivered and drew breath. What might have happened
if----He looked forward. He imagined he could hear the crash, see the
great bow sinking; he could hear the splintering of the bulk-heads,
the screams of the people tumbling up the companionways, the panic and
pandemonium, the mad rush for the boats, the horrid, slow subsidence.
But it was not to be; the danger had gone by!

Now he remembered having heard that first low whistle before the two
that had signaled so plainly: "_I have my helm to starboard--passing
to starboard of you!_" And yet, well did he know that no fires blazed
in those dead furnaces, no steam was coming from that rusty,
salt-incrusted funnel. It was as if the dead had spoken to warn the
living! He shivered once more, and staggered to the bridge-ladder,
holding on and listening.

Three, four, five times did the _Caronia's_ siren wail out into the
stillness. _No reply._ And then the throbbing pulses took up their
beat again.

Down in the corner of the main saloon, filled with chattering people,
romping children, and game-playing young folk, who knew not what had
passed on deck, sat the Silly Ass, the girl close to him.

"I'll never tell," she whispered. "What is it you're thinking of?"

The round eyes gazed into hers. "It's a long time since I did," he
said.

"Did what?"

"Prayed! God made me a fool just to do this some day, I guess." His
face showed the expression of a grown-up, sobered man.

On the bridge, the captain and the other officers were talking in low,
awe-struck tones.

[Illustration]

WAR ON THE TIGER

BY W. G. FITZ-GERALD

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND FROM DRAWINGS BY FRANKLIN BOOTH

The _patwari_ salaamed and laid a report on my desk--a thing of maps
and figures that brought the sweat to my face. Fifty-seven killed, six
hundred square miles of rich rice and sugar country demoralized,
communications stopped, crops rotting on the ground, nine villages
abandoned, and the shyest of jungle creatures grazing in the
market-place! Tiger and tigress--a bad case.

When I told a man once that tigers and cobras, between them, made away
with 25,000 human beings in India every year, he thought I was joking.
"Why," said he, "surely one fifth of the human race--325,000,000, at
any rate--is packed into that triangle! Where can the tigers live?"
But I underestimated it; there were just 24,938 killed in 1906 by
tigers alone. You can see it yourself in the government records.

Now, as District Officer, I'm the "father" of two million souls, and
responsible for all things, from murder to measles. But this was
beyond me. It was a Commissioner's job, backed by the Maharaja.

The man-eaters, now propitiated as gods, had taken toll of my
villagers for two long years. The people were in abject terror, for
none knew the day, hour, or place of the monsters' next leap. Many
were already resigned to death. "It's written on our foreheads," they
said, with gentle misery. Poor devils! Think of the two hundred
millions of them in India oscillating between mere existence and
positive starvation; not living, but just strong enough to crawl along
on the edge of death!

I called the _tahsildar_: "Bring me the record of these tigers."

A bulky file of horrors, in truth! Here a goatherd was taken; there it
was an old woman gathering sticks in the jungle, or children playing
in the village street, or maybe girls going down to the river for
water, laughing joyously, unaware of the great green eyes that watched
them through the towering stalks of elephant-grass; and last among the
victims came some desperate young men who had faced one of the
creatures with fish-spears.

[Illustration: "FIRST A MAGNIFICENT YELLOW HEAD EMERGES, THEN THE
LONG, LITHE BODY"]

It was a difficult country of limitless forest, broken in places by
low hills and by bare sites of the typical village of India. And
apparently from all quarters came the same report, with little
modification. Here is a specimen:

[Illustration: HOWDAH ELEPHANT TRAINING MADE EASY

HE IS FED WITH "GOOR" OR CRUDE SUGAR BEFORE STARTING ON THE TIGER
HUNT]

"As I rode into camp at Bussavanpur to-day, I was met by trackers who
told me the death wail was 'up' in the village. They brought to me a
woman with three small children. Her husband was the latest victim.
With tearless Hindu apathy she told her story, and I gave her five
rupees. She had to spend half this, according to caste usage, because
it was said to be the devil in her that had led the yellow devil to
him. The formalities over, she was admitted to the villages of her
caste, and then took me to the tragic scene. A solitary tamarind-tree
grew on some rocks near the village; no jungle within three hundred
yards; a few bushes on the rock crevices. And close by ran the broad
cattle-track into the village. The man had been following the cattle
home in the evening, and must have stopped to knock down some
tamarinds with his stick; for this last, with his black blanket and
skin cap, still lay where he was seized. Evidently the tigress had
hidden in the rocks, and was upon him in one bound. Dragging her
victim to the edge of a rocky plateau, she leaped down into a field
and there killed him. The spot was marked by a pool of dried blood. I
walked for two hours with the trackers, hoping to come on some traces
of the brute or her mate, but without success."

And so on. Some of the deaths were horrible by reason of the eery
silence that marked them, others because of the mysterious movements
or amazing cunning of the tigers. The comic episodes it were not
seemly to dwell upon. But fifty-seven! Nothing for it now but a hurry
call to the Commissioner and the Maharaja for elephants and an army of
tiger-hunters, a mobilization of the best _shikaris_ in all India, for
a regular campaign against these beasts.

In fourteen days that army was on the spot, and I enlisted under the
banner of Colonel Howe of the Tenth Hussars. The staff was made up of
_shikaris_, and the beaters were of the rank and file. Maps were
called for and studied, scouts sent far and wide into the theater of
operations; native reports were sifted and their exaggerations
discounted with the skill of long practice.

[Illustration: LAST WALL OF DEFENSE

THE TIGER-HUNTING ELEPHANTS CLOSE THEIR RANKS TO RECEIVE THE CHARGE]

Tiger war is a science with axioms of its own. First of all come the
weather and the water-supply. It's useless to look for tigers in a dry
country, and it's useless to try and find them in the wet season, when
there is plenty of water everywhere. "Stripes" must be hunted in hot
weather, when great heat and the water distribution limit his
wanderings, and when forest leaves have fallen and the dense jungle is
thinned out.

And yet, there are all kinds of problems. For instance, Indian weather
is so erratic that, while there may be water and cover and tigers one
season, all three will be absent the next. Further, there is marked
individuality among tigers. One will lie in water all day, and never
venture forth till the sun has sunk behind the western hills; another
prowls boldly by day. Some prey on forest beasts--chiefly the spotted
cheetah and sambur-stag; others, again, mark out domestic animals. And
last comes the tigress with clamorous cubs, who suddenly learns by
accident or impulse that man, hitherto so feared, is in reality the
easiest prey of all.

We had a front of eighty miles. Naturally we needed a big force; we
probably mustered three hundred, all told. Our base of operations was
a railroad-station twenty miles away, and we doubted at first whether
we could live on the country, for the terrified people had abandoned
all cultivation, and were living on bamboo-seeds and the fleshy
blossoms of the mahwa-tree. This was a serious question--this and our
transport. We had seventy-four elephants, and each ate seven hundred
pounds of green stuff or sugar-cane every day; and of camels,
bullocks, rude carts, and horses we had hundreds, to say nothing of
the dozens of buffaloes we carried as live bait for tigers. We should
need fodder by the ton, as well as sheep, fowl, goats, game, and milk;
grain, too, for the crowds of camp-followers; and canned foods and
medicines--including, not least, the store of carbolic acid for
possible tiger-bites and maulings. The water was to be boiled and
filtered, then treated with permanganate of potash. It was regular
army equipment, you see.

I went out myself with the _shikari_ scouts, inspecting jungle-paths,
dry river-beds, and muddy margins of pools. They pointed out to me the
first rudiments in nature's book of signs: first of all the tiger
"pug," and the difference between the footprints of the tiger and the
tigress--the male's square, the female's a clear-cut oval. Here the
great tiger had drunk four days ago. The prints were not clear; in
places they were obliterated by tracks of bear, deer, and porcupine.

But clearly we were in a favorite haunt of both man-eaters. The male
must have passed after dawn, for his tracks overlay those of little
quail, which do not emerge until after daybreak. Then yet more signs:
muddy pools told mute tales of recent visits; high over the hill that
fell sheer to the valley were specks of vultures, hovering over recent
kills. Back to camp we went to report the enemy's presence.

The next move was the setting out of the live bait--the buffaloes.
Twoscore of the slow, ponderous creatures were led out and staked in a
great ring about the tigers, passive outposts about the enemy,
inviting their attack--an attack sure to come during the night. Then
we went back again to wait.

[Illustration: SLAYER OF SEVENTY-SIX NATIVES LAID LOW AT LAST

HE AND HIS MATE RAVAGED A TRACT OF COUNTRY FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY
SQUARE MILES IN EXTENT]

Meanwhile, during the time while scouts were reconnoitering the enemy,
the rank and file had been offering sacrifices to their gods. The
Moslems were less tiresome than the Hindus in this respect. They
merely went in a body to the snow-white _zariat_ (saint-house) on the
hill, and offered up a goat. But the Brahman deity had to be
propitiated, lest all our plans go down to defeat. This god dwelt in a
jungle, attended by an old _jogi_ smeared with wood-ashes and streaked
with paint. Another goat was slain here. The beast was made to bow
comically three times before the hideous image in the shrine, and then
his throat was cut. Victory was now sure. The pious preliminaries
were finished, and then arrived at last the day of battle--the scenes
of which you never forget.

* * * * *

We are up and out at dawn, riding about the wide circle of the
tethered buffaloes. A delicate business, this. As we draw near the
first one, with infinite caution, we inspect the site through strong
binoculars. A flick of the ear, a whisk of the tail because of flies,
show that No. 1 is still alive. We water and feed the beast with fresh
grass, and then leave him. But our next place of call looks
suspicious, even from afar. A crow is cawing in a tree, and looks with
beady eyes below. Dark vulture-specks are wheeling in the blue. And
see! Tiger-marks in the dust, both square and oval! The dread couple
have been here--early in the night, evidently, for over their
"pug"-marks lies the trail of porcupines and other nocturnal beasts.
Sure enough, the big buffalo is gone, leaving only a broken rope-end,
a few splashes of blood, and the labored trail of a heavy body.
Strategy is ended now, and tactics begin.

We gallop back to camp and give the alarm. The huge battle-line is
ready. Long rows of giant tuskers stand with swaying heads, each with
his howdah beside him--towering brutes such as the old kings of Asia
rode into battle, to the terror of their enemies. The herds of
disdainful camels are kneeling in roaring protest against the camp
loads. From all quarters scouts have reported the enemy. Our army,
horse and foot, elephants and camels, will march in an hour--as
strange a sight and as strange a work as may be witnessed in the world
to-day.

Watch each elephant kneel and come prone for his big hunting-tower.
There are five men to each elephant, one at his head, four to haul the
gear and make fast. The deft skill, the swiftness and silence, show
the veteran in the enemy's country. Every man knows his work and knows
the officer above him; and each officer, too, knows just what is
expected of him--from the lowest up to the colonel himself, a fine
figure, tall, erect, white-haired, an adept in tiger-lore, with a
hundred and fifty skins in his bungalow.

[Illustration: TIGRESS ALSO IS SLAIN

THE BODY BORNE BACK TO CAMP ON ONE OF THE PAD-ELEPHANTS]

Twelve mounted sahibs gallop this way and that, collecting _shikaris_
and beaters. Native officers distribute fire-works and tom-toms,
rattles and flint-locks and torches. The _mot d'ordre_ is: "Kick
up----at the right time."

There is a brief, businesslike interview in old Howe's tent. "The
tigers," he says in a matter-of-fact way, as though dismissing school,
"shall be inclosed in a triangle, of which the apex shall be ourselves
and the elephants. You will draw lots for positions among yourselves.
The bases of the triangle shall be the beaters, and the flanks the
stops posted up trees, who shall see that the tigers do not turn and
break out of the beat. You will please be alert, with rifles cocked
and barrels and cartridges examined beforehand. There must be no undue
noise or haste. Remember, the clink of a finger-ring on a barrel or
the gleam of the sun on a bright muzzle may turn them. That's all,
gentlemen."

We troop out to distribute rifles to the sepoys, who are supposed to
protect the unarmed beaters. Some of us ride off for miles into the
jungle to the base of the fateful triangle. Others visit the
"stops"--keen-eyed _shikaris_, perched like crows in the big
sal-trees.

Then hark--a shot! It travels like fire, and is answered by a faint
uproar. The beat has begun. We dismount from our elephants for a
steady shot, leaving them behind us in a huge semicircle. Some of them
scent danger, and twirl delicate trunks high in the air. They have
"been there" before! The mahouts sit motionless as bronze
figures--superb fellows, deeply learned in jungle-lore. The triangle's
apex and flanks are in absolute silence, but the base is fiendish with
uproar. Two hundred men are yelling and cursing, roaring and singing,
beating pots and pans, tom-toms and gongs.

Hearts beat a little faster. We look at one another anxiously and
whisper, "Is the beat empty?" It would seem so, for the cunning brutes
give no sign. Yet they must be driven forward if they are there. Ha! a
slender sal-tree to the left shakes with excitement. A turbaned head
shoots out of its branches, with a sudden sound of hand-clapping and
shouting. One of the stops has seen a stirring in the high yellow
grass. The tigers are in the living net!

I call to my side Hyder Ali, my gun-bearer, a lean Pathan from the
Khyber Pass.

"You have my .303?"

He nods and smiles. At that moment I hear a heavy footfall, as of some
great beast, on the thick dry leaves. The high grass parts. First a
magnificent yellow head emerges, infinitely alert; then the long,
lithe body, a picture of supple grace and immense strength. A superb
spectacle the creature presents, with his lovely coat gleaming in the
hot sun. But the din is drawing near. Down goes the massive head;
wide, cruel lips draw back, and four long primary fangs are bared in a
gruff roar. Then he dashes forward for cover. But too late; I have
drawn a bead on his rippling shoulder and fired.

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