"Quite so," said he. "The next I felt was that I seemed to fall back
upon something soft, and that's all I know. The next I saw was the
people bending over me, and I could hear one say to another, 'He's not
dead yet,' and others said, 'He's dead,' but none of them touched me,
and I tried to speak, but could not. Then after a long time somebody
saw I was breathing, and somebody put something under my head, and ...
I am not hurt, so far as I am aware," concluded the inspector, "but
feel stunned and queer, and horribly helpless."
The villagers said, "We saw the pony come galloping with an empty
saddle along the road which goes through the village, and in the
middle of the village it stopped short and made a noise. It was
quivering. Its hind-quarters were bleeding from great tiger's
claw-marks as you see them yet."
The poor beast was still sore from the scratches a month afterwards.
Whether it ever recovered I never heard.
With a celerity and courage characteristic of the unspoiled Burman,
every man in the village soon had a da (big knife) or home-made spear
in his hand, and many had torches or lamps as well. But while they
thus prepared for action promptly, it has to be noted that there was a
certain hesitation about starting. Some objected. Why? The pony had
been recognised as the inspector's. He was rather popular than
otherwise, but he was a policeman. No Burman could say with truth that
he thought it right to save the life of a policeman. Even the older
men, who were addicted to religion, could only say, "He's a man, after
all." Equally with the rest they believed that any policeman in the
pay of the English is irretrievably doomed to hell, and has deserved
to be. But, what made the pious elders on this occasion more readily
silent than they might otherwise have been, there were several who
delivered themselves of sentiments that might be translated by a verse
of an old English ballad:--
"Saddled and bridled
And booted rade he;
Toom hame (empty home) cam' the saddle,
But never cam' he!"
"It's not a man that you're going to save. You're likely to be late
for that! It's a corpse you're going to take from a tiger."
This was conclusive. The most scrupulous Burman can risk his life with
a clear conscience in fighting a tiger to recover a corpse. So the
crowd set out.
Great was their wonder to find the inspector prostrate upon the road,
unconscious, but unscratched. When they had heard his story they said
to me,--
"The tiger cannot have seen him at all. Lying in wait here, it must
have seen only his piebald pony, and, leaping so as to land on its
shoulders, it must have knocked its nose severely against the man's
back and slipped down. Then he fell upon it, and so perplexed it more
than ever, and it would step aside into cover to consider awhile."
Perhaps the shrewdest remark made on the incident was this: "When
struck on the back, the man must have let out a howl. That would
frighten the tiger!" The inspector did not remember that, but could
not be expected to remember it. He would do it without thinking.
It was his own and the general opinion that if help had not come, as
it did, the tiger would have come back; and, humanity mastering
prejudice, the people said, "We are glad we came."
The fright made him talk of leaving the police and leading a new life.
But his salary was good. He was like the rich man in Scripture, who
had great possessions. The villagers did not blame him for changing
his mind and not resigning. It was as much in earnest as in jest that
they said, "He may become religious, when he takes his pension."
About the same time as this wonderful escape, a lonely leper who lived
in a hut, like a hermit, on the opposite side of the river,
disappeared for ever, and the few bloody rags that were left and the
tell-tale footprints showed that the tiger had come upon him, like a
thief in the night, and carried him bodily away.
"We are very sorry for the leper," said the villagers to the
inspector, when he next rode by, and the fate of the leper was
discussed. "We are very sorry for the leper, and for the tiger too.
Either your pony or yourself would have been more wholesome eating."