The thermometer stood at 155 degrees in the sun. The dry lallang grass
crackled and glowed and returned long irregular waves of heat to the
quivering metallic dome above.
The sensitive mimosa, at our feet, had long since surrendered to the
fierce wooing of the sun-god, submissively folding its leaves and
then its branches and putting aside its morning dress of green for
one more in keeping with the color of the earth and sky. Even the
clamorous cicada had hushed its insistent whir.
We were dressed in brown kaki suits. Wide-spreading cork helmets
were filled with the stiff varnished leaves of the mango, and wet
handkerchiefs were draped from underneath their rims; yet, after an
hour of exposure, our flesh ached--it was tender to the touch. The
barrel of my Express scorched my hand, and I wrapped my camerabuna
about it. But then it was no hotter than any other day. In fact,
we never gave a thought to the weather.
We were formed in a line, perhaps two miles in length, in a
deserted pepper plantation, fronting a jungle of timboso trees
and rubber-vines. I squatted patiently under the checkered shade
of a neglected coffee tree and kept my eyes fixed on the seemingly
impenetrable walls of the jungle. A hundred feet to the right and the
left, under like protection, were two of my companions, determined
like myself to be successful in three points,--to have the first shot
at the pigs, to avoid getting shot, or shooting a neighbor. But our
minds rose above mental cautions with the first faint halloos of the
Hindu shikaris on the opposite side of the jungle. In another moment
the babel gave place to a confusion of shrieks, howls, yells, laughs,
barking of dogs, beating of tins, blowing of horns, explosions of
crackers, and a din that represents all that is wild and untamable
in three nations. It is a weird, almost appalling prologue. Those
laughs!--they are a study--they fairly chill the blood--they would make
the fortune of a comic actor--so intense, thrilling, surprising, and
seemingly filled with a ghoulish glee. Over and over they would break
out clear and distinct above the tintamarre. I have never been able
to find out whether it belongs to the Malay or the Kling or the Tamil.
The yelling became more distinct. A troop of brown and silver wah-wahs
swung with their long arms out to the very edge of the jungle and then
up to the tops of the highest trees, the while uttering the full,
clear note from which they take their name; followed by a troop of
gray little jungle monkeys, whistling and scolding at the unwonted
disturbance. A colony of cicadas on the limbs of a great gutta tree
awoke into life and pierced our ears with buzz-saw strains.
In an instant we were all alert,--the heat was forgotten. At any minute
a herd of pigs might dart out and on to us, or possibly our drivers
might rouse a tiger. The screaming ascended to a delirious pitch--the
pigs were discovered! I threw my cartridge from the magazine into the
barrel. It was a 50x95 Express and I had perfect confidence that one
ball to a pig was sufficient.
The yelling grew nearer until, with a sudden deploy, one hundred
Klings and Malays dashed out into the open, close on the heels of a
dozen wild pigs. We could just see their black backs above the grass,
as they broke down a little ravine in single file, led by a big,
hoary boar with tusks. They were three hundred yards off, but I could
not resist the temptation. I brought my rifle to my shoulder and fired
twice in rapid succession. Two or three more shots were heard beyond. I
threw out the shells as the herd lunged on me. It was so sudden that
I was dazed, but fortunately so were the pigs, with the exception of
a wary old leader, who made into the jungle behind, almost between my
legs. One little fellow threw himself on his haunches for an instant
and stared at me. I came to my senses first and put a ball into his
wondering eyes. My second shot was so near that it tore away a pound
of meat from his shoulder and killed him instantly.
The firing had opened up all along the line. The drivers were
pushing in nearer and nearer, beating the grass and clumps of bushes,
seemingly regardless of the widely flying balls. I suspect they held
our prowess in contempt. I know they looked it, when it was discovered
that out of the dozen pigs they had raised, we had allowed over half
to escape. Then, too, their lives were insured, in a way; for they
knew that their deaths would cost us twenty big Mexican dollars.
Pig-hunting is the one big-game hunt that can be indulged in on the
Malay Peninsula without great preparation and danger. Deer and tapirs
are scarce. Tigers, or harimau as the Malays call them, abound, but
live in the depths of the almost inaccessible jungle, and come forth
only at rare intervals, except in the case of the man-eaters, who
are usually ignominiously caught in pitfalls, very seldom affording
true sport. Elephants are still hunted in the native states north
of Singapore, but the sport is too expensive for the generality of
sportsmen. One of the peculiar attributes of the Malayan tiger is his
decided penchant for Chinese flesh, repeatedly striking down Chinese
coolies in the fields to the exclusion of the Malays or Europeans who
are working by their side. Perhaps once a month, a tiger or his skin
will be brought into the city by natives, and several times at night
I have heard them in the jungle; but to my knowledge only three have
been shot by European sportsmen during my residence in the island. So
wild pigs really remain the one item of big game.
The pigs live in the jungle bordering plantations in which they can
range for pineapples, sweet potatoes, and tapioca root. They are
the ordinary wild hog, black in color, and fleet of foot. The older
ones have good-sized tusks and show fight when cornered. The lone
sportsman has very little chance of obtaining a shot, so they are
hunted in large companies of from five to fifteen guns. Such parties
generally organize a hunt at least once a week and leave Singapore
early in the morning for an all-day shoot.
The pig hunts organized by the officers of the Royal Artillery are
the largest, and as a description of one is a description of all,
I will take one up in regular order, rather than quote from many.
We left Singapore at six o'clock in the morning in a four-horse
dray. As the sun had not reached the tops of the trees, the
atmosphere was mild and pleasant. A half-hour took us outside the
great cosmopolitan city, of three hundred thousand inhabitants. The
low, cool bungalows with their wide-spreading lawns gave place to
the grass-thatched huts of the Chinese coolies, and the omnipresent
eating-stalls. A hard-packed road carried us through almost endless
cocoanut groves. At intervals a Malay kampong, or village, was
revealed in the heart of the grove, its queer attap-thatched houses
raised a man's height from the ground, and connected with it by rickety
ladders. Dozens of nude little children played under the shadow of the
palms, while the comely faces and syrah-stained teeth of their mothers
peeped at us from behind low barred windows. The cocoanut groves were
superseded by tapioca, pepper, and coffee plantations. At regular
distances were neat stations, manned by Malay and Sikh police. The
roads over which we dashed were in perfect repair. In another hour
we were nine miles from Singapore and near our first "beat."
Major Rich had sent his shikaris on the night before to collect
beaters, so that when we arrived we were welcomed by a small
army of Klings, Tamils, and Malays, and the usual sprinkling of
pariah dogs. A wild, strange set are these beaters. They toil not,
neither do they spin. Their wives do that occasionally, making a
few sarongs for home use and an odd one for the market. Cocoanuts,
pineapples, a little patch of paddy with a dozen half-wild chickens,
and perchance, if they are not Mohammedans, a pig with its litter,
afford them sustenance. For their day's beating they were to receive
fifteen cents apiece. They were all ranged in line and counted,
after which we took up our march through a plantation of tapioca,
the brush standing about level with our heads. Chinese coolies
were working about its roots keeping down the great pest of Malayan
farmers,--lallang grass. The tapioca was broken in places by a few
acres of pepper vines and again by neglected coffee shrubs.
Our procession was truly formidable. Fifty or more natives went on
ahead making a path. Then we followed, fifteen in number, each with
a native to carry his gun. The rear was brought up by twoscore more
and half as many dogs. Three-quarters of an hour's walk brought us
to our first beat. The head shikaris placed us in an open position,
from fifty to one hundred yards apart, facing the jungle. The beaters,
in the meantime, had gone by a long detour around the jungle to drive
whatever it contained within reach of our guns.
In the second of these beats (I described the first in the opening of
this chapter) a deer ran out far in advance of the pigs. We caught
but a fleeting glimpse of it above the grass. My gun and that of my
neighbor went off simultaneously. The deer disappeared. We rushed
to the spot and found the leaves dyed with blood. Then commenced a
chase, which, although fruitless, was well worth the exertion. All
the panorama of tropical life seemed to lay in our tracks. For
an half-hour we traversed the rolling plain with its burden of
grass. Some smoker dropped a match in it, and in an instant it was
all ablaze, spreading away like a whirlwind, burning only the very
tips, toward a distant jungle. Then we dove into a bosky wood by
a narrow winding path, and through a stream of water. The path was
like a tunnel, the dense foliage shutting it in on both sides and
above. The thorns of the rattans reached down and tore our clothes,
and long trailing rubber-vines caught up our helmets and held our
feet. In a marshy bit of jungle, a small colony of unwieldy sago
palms found root, while pitcher-plants and orchids hung from almost
every limb. Clumsy gray iguanas and long-tailed lizards of a brilliant
green rushed up the trunks of lichen-covered trees. Troops of monkeys
went scattering away on all sides, and black squirrels chattered on in
the perfect security of the dim obscurity. In a bit of sandy bottom,
a silken-haired, zebra-striped tapir scuttled away ere we were half
alive to his presence.
Outside was the metallic glare of the Malayan sun once more, now at its
height, and another march was before us, over the burning hot mesa. At
one o'clock we came upon a half-neglected plantation. The bloody trail
of the deer led through it. In the centre of the plantation we found
a huge wedge-shaped attap house for drying pepper, and there we rested.
Our tiffin baskets were six miles away in the dray, and sending after
them was out of the question. So we foraged for eatables. Cocoanuts
were easily obtained from trees all about, and a little whiskey
mixed with its milk made a very refreshing drink. Pineapples, small
oranges, limes, papayas, custard apples, and bananas were in large
quantities. Our drivers added to this bill of fare by roasting the
sweet-potato-like roots of the tapioca. After this impromptu lunch
they compounded their quids of areca-nut and lime, and were ready
once more to beat up an adjacent jungle for deer, pig, or tiger.
As before, we were soon in position in the open before the jungle
and the beaters were yelling at the top of their voices.
I was half dozing in the sun, trying to smoke a Manila cigar that
my mouth was too dry to draw, when I was aroused by my neighbor,
who called my attention to a file of pigs at the extreme end of the
line. I could just see what was going on from the knoll on which I
was standing. They were received by Major Rich, one of his subalterns,
and his Hindu gun-carrier. One of the file fell at the first volley,
two more broke through the line, and the remaining six or seven,
led by a fierce old fellow, from whose long tusks the foam dripped,
turned up the line and charged point-blank on the next gunner, who
fired and missed, but succeeded in keeping them between the line and
the jungle. The fourth gun brought down the second pig and wounded the
boar in the shoulder. Frantic with rage and pain, the old fellow tore
up the ground and grass with his tusks and then, seeming to give up
all idea of escape, wheeled sharply around and with his back bristles
standing erect and his mouth open, charged directly on to the fifth,
who was in the act of throwing the cartridge into the barrel. Taken
completely by surprise, the officer gave one lusty yell and started
to run in line with the gun on his right. The boar was gaining on
him at every step when he tripped and fell. The report of No. 6's
Winchester Express rang out almost simultaneously. For an instant we
held our breaths, wondering whether the man or boar had been hit. It
was a splendid shot and took a steady hand. The boar's shoulder was
shattered and his heart reached. Two or three angry grunts and he lay
quiet. He weighed close to three hundred pounds. The bristles on his
back were white with age. All in all, he was not nice to look at.
As half of our beaters were Mohammedans and so forbidden to touch pork,
the burden of carrying our pigs the six miles through lallang grass,
jungle and swamp land, came hard on our Brahmists. We knew that the
only way to make them work was to call them "Sons of dogs" and walk
off and leave them with a parting injunction to "get in by the time
we did if they wanted their wages."
This we did without deigning to notice their pathetic gestures,
heart-rending appeals and protestations to the "Sons of the
Heaven-Born" that they could not lift one hundredth part of such
burdens.