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!