In fairness to the eloquent hero of this adventure it should be told,
lest any reader does not know it, that wounded leopards are as
dangerous as wounded lions or tigers. There was one that was clumsily
handled by villagers in Burma a few years ago, and six men died out of
those it injured; and I know a man who has told me, with a shudder,
that he has twice seen a clever hunter at his side killed by a wounded
leopard "charging home."
It was early in 1888, and on the plains near the mouth of the Sittang
river in Burma, that I was one of about twenty men with rifles who
gathered round a big and leafy tree, in which a mortally-wounded
leopard had taken refuge. None could see him; and, when his growl was
hushed, we could not even guess his whereabouts. It grew tedious
standing there, like waiting for a train that is late. Many men fired
at moving twigs, on the chance that he might be below them. "He ought
to be in bits by this time," said one at last, "and falling down in
detachments." But nothing fell, not even a drop of blood. It became
more and more difficult to keep the villagers surging around at a safe
distance.
Then out stepped a brave sepoy, and, heedless of the dissuasive shouts
of his companions, he prepared to climb the tree. I shouted "stop";
and he grew eloquent, not in the style of Bengal, but in the best
Indian manner, heated sincerely by seeing himself balked of a chance
of distinction.
"What is the danger to _me_? Am I afraid of anything? Let cannon and
rifles thunder and rattle, I will walk into myriads of them if I am
bidden. What is a leopard to the like of that?
"I want to _show_ what I can do. I will show I cannot be afraid. O,
let me go! Do not bid me stop! What is a little leopard? I could take
a tiger by the paw!
"It is a duty to slay that leopard, a duty to face and kill him, a
duty to the people, a duty to the Sarkar." ...
Here note two things. First, see the innate instinct of obedience,
illustrated by the reference to the Sarkar or Government. Fancy any
European talking of it in such a connection without derision. Among
our very soldiers it would raise a laugh. Well indeed do the Indians
say, as they are now doing, that it is Europe that leads and
pin-pricks them into anarchy. The other thing to note is the fine
oratorical tact of the speaker, worthy of Demosthenes. There was not
the faintest allusion to what we all knew, that the leopard was sure
to be dead presently. This did not make it less dangerous to close
with him, but only made it quite needless. The speech ran on:
"It is a duty to slay that leopard. Through this big village he went
ravenous, seeking whom to devour. He terrified the women and children,
and made the men shiver, while the sky rang with shrieks. He stalked
as a master through the town" (here the orator, by a sweep of one arm,
included the adjoining village to the north); "and the country
shuddered with horror" (here, with a sweep of both arms, he included
the entire countryside).
In fact, the leopard had been in search of a superfluous village dog,
and when he found himself noticed and heard the people yelling, he
skulked from bush to bush till he was shot, and then ran up a tree.
The orator expressed the matter differently. There is a great deal in
the way of putting things. What he next said was:
"He left the woods, the home of his kind. He came among the dwellings
of men. Shall we make way for him? Shall he be suffered to ravage and
run away? Shall he come and go like our master, as if we all were
sheep and he the eater? No! give me but the word, and up I go, and
take him by the paw, and fling him down. Danger? What do I care for
danger? O, let me at him, to show how brave a man can be and make the
beasts beware! For, of all the duties a brave man has...."
At this moment he looked up, as if at the sky, but saw the leopard,
suddenly visible, coming down the tree, and hastily ran back, and was
seen and heard no more.
A curious sequel is worth telling. The wounded beast ran into a bush;
and a young Burman policeman, who understood of the sepoy's speech
only that he was boasting of bravery, resolved to show himself the
better man, and sprang forward, dancing a beautiful _pas seul_, and
brandishing a big knife, the Burman sword, a handier weapon than ours.
"I'll finish the leopard," he cried, and started for its hiding-place,
running past me.
It was a pretty sight. We never see now in Europe the solo dances
still visible in Burma, and some other eastern countries, on religious
high tides. We can only read of them in the Hebrew Bible, which tells
of King David casting off the trappings of royalty, and leaping and
dancing before the ark in a scanty garment, and so scandalising the
genteelest of his wives, Saul's daughter, Michal, who quarrelled with
him about it. A dance like David's, if you are lucky, you may yet see
in Burma; but hardly again, in this new world of breechloaders and
explosive acids, hardly but by some rare accident, can anyone see what
we saw then, a spontaneous Pyrrhic dance done singly, so to speak, a
man dancing forward, flourishing his sword, to a deadly encounter.
A most deadly encounter it might have been. The leopard was shot
through the lungs, and bleeding to death, inwardly. I thought I had
noticed him spit blood, and anyone could see he was badly wounded. But
he was only dying, not dead. His eyes flashed in the dark below the
brushwood, where he lay, and he raised his head and half sat up,
showing his teeth and growling, a very loud, monotonous, continuous
growl.
I just was in time to knock our hero down, within five yards of the
leopard, and step between him and it, quickly joined by one or two
others. There was nothing to do but stand ready. The uplifted head was
lowered, slowly; the growl grew less, and was punctuated by pauses,
which grew longer and longer. There was a long pause, during which
there was nothing to hear but men's breathing; then the dread silence
was broken by the voice of a young Burman, creeping past me on all
fours and crying, "Just let me pull its tail...."
It was an idle day that followed, which gave them leisure to enjoy
themselves. About twenty-nine men spent it dividing the corpse. They
quarrelled, and I quoted to them the proverb, "The lot causeth
contention to cease." Sure enough, it did so. They cast lots in peace,
and told me that eating such a beast made men partake the strength and
courage of the dead. I thought of many things, as I listened, such as
Marco Polo's story of tribes in Southern China, who were so sure of
acquiring fine qualities in this way that, if a traveller seemed
uncommonly beautiful or otherwise gifted, they sometimes killed and
ate him. It is a strange belief, and, in one form or another, it has
appeared in many countries. But all the same, whatever I happened to
remember on this occasion, the prevailing feeling was that the next
time there was such a job to be done, with such a crowd, it would be
alike expedient and gracious to--delegate the leadership.