Many pages of the book were missing, and several broke as I handled it. They didn't tear, just snapped and crumbled soundlessly. I learned sense then and stopped touching it. If it had been made of snowflakes, the thing could hardly have been less frail.
I had seen old books often enough professionally, but I had seldom had to puzzle out a lot of their contents. When in doubt, they went, as a general rule.
There were few pictures in the book and the ancient cramped layout and typefaces made it horribly difficult to read after a while, even though the spelling was relatively modern. I took a painkiller and then got the book to Bannerjee at the ARM Lab in New Sydney and had him photograph it before more harm was done. Then I got to the 'doc for treatment for my finger. I had hardly ever seen real blood before, certainly not my own, and I did not like the sight. Once, people like Colonel Vaughn must have seen a lot of blood.
The 'doc treated my finger, but nothing else. O'Brien's direction on that matter had gone right through the system. I slept badly that night. A headache the 'doc again refused to medicate. A slight throb in my finger, all adding up to the unpleasant novelty of pain. It was like living in a fant book, I thought sourly, living, perhaps, as the military fants wanted it. And maybe my system was changing.
CHAPTER 4
I had been asked to travel to the Mohne Dam, that structure at the head of the Ruhr Valley which was breached by the 'Dambusters' 50 years ago, to research an anniversary article. [There was] no clue as to the events of that night of May 16/17, 1943. There are no plaques, no memorials, no postcards. There are no twisted chunks of bomb casing mounted on a concrete plinth. There is no roll call of the drowned. Nothing. Girls sunbathed in the 80 degree sunshine and a couple of yachts moved sleepily in the light breeze.
Bannerjee called me next morning, with the pages nicely enlarged and cleaned, and with a parallel text on the screen supplied in modern type which had been scanned from the legible parts and which I could read without developing a headache.
I kept him hooked up and we read the pages together. The book began with a conventional description of the colonel's family, apparently ancient even when the words had been set down. I soon found the chapter heading I wanted.
The Indians said the tiger had come to the district a few months before. It had come, they said, in a blaze of light during a thunderstorm.
Certainly their superstitious awe could be explained by its extraordinary ferocity. Man-eaters in these parts generally adopt anthropophagy because owing to age or injury they can no longer pursue and pull down swifter and stronger game. But in this case men, cattle (including buffaloes), deer, bears and other creatures tame and wild, including even elephants, appeared to have fallen victim to a single beast. It attacked by day as well as by night, and even seemed to favor the daylight hours. It was said to be fearless and made little or no effort to conceal itself, save when it was plainly stalking for pleasure.
Efforts to kill it by a band of determined villagers had ended in disaster. Once it had disposed of them, it came into the village itself and wrought havoc.
Then the survivors had fled en masse. Yet these were tough hillmen who regard the tiger as a natural foe and will, if there is not a British regiment in the area with breech-loading repeaters and perhaps a few elephants, normally be prepared to tackle any beast on foot with tower-muskets.
There had been found, indeed, the half-eaten body of another tiger it had apparently defeated, and that, said Sher Ali, the descendant of generations of hunters and marksmen who examined it and knows tigers well (he had even taken his name from them), had been a Royal Beast. I will write of Sher Ali more, for he proved himself that day and was to be long in my service, though I cannot say I took him for a servant. Rather, in the way of the Pathan — and he was an Afridi — he took me for his master. The tiger had spread terror far and wide. There were plenty of stories afoot among the villages that our quarry was in fact a demon, or a ghost.
Indeed, but for the descriptions of it that a few lucky ones who had seen it and survived had brought back, we ourselves should have been doubtful that it was a tiger at all. Its spoor was quite unlike that of any tiger's pugmarks. Curlewis suggested its paws had been burnt to deformity in some forest fire. But then how could it travel so far and so swiftly?
We plotted the pattern of its kills on an ordinance map…
There was another gap here. From what was left of the page it appeared the map he referred to had been reproduced in a foldout form. Some of the village names and contour lines were left on the remaining part and I suckered a copy of this from the screen.
It was a well-provisioned shikar, the best we could manage. We left as little to chance as possible, and owing to what we had heard of the beast's size, took the largest caliber of rifles we had: elephant guns for our first weapons. We had Express rifles with the exploding bullets from the Dum-Dum Arsenal, and of course reliable military Martinis, borrowed from the infantry (I didn't think our own carbines would be much use). We also had two of the new American Winchesters which the brigadier-general had asked us to try out. The bearers and beaters, we made sure, were well equipped with gongs, rockets, torches and guns. Sher Ali selected only the steadiest men for beaters.
It roamed far afield, but its regular lair, we were told, was in the adjacent valley where it had first been seen, which was now virtually depopulated. Indeed the country was now almost empty of human inhabitants for miles around. Those that had not been devoured had fled.
Not only, it seemed, was this tiger more voracious and aggressive than any man-eater I had ever heard of, but it was faster and more cunning. No horse would stay near its tracks.
With the aid of the map we had carefully worked out a plan to disperse the beaters to drive the beast towards our guns when we had positioned ourselves in its valley. Never, in the event, did any plan prove more unnecessary…
There was another gap here. The passage referring to the first part of the tiger hunt seemed to have been lost. Presumably the most frequently referred to part of the book had suffered the most wear and tear. The next few pages had had to be cleaned of old dirt.
It was not to be like any stalk I have ever known. A bold tiger will sometimes not trouble overmuch to conceal its tracks. This beast had left them everywhere. The path from the valley where it had first been seen and where it was now headquartered was beaten like a highway.
It was a strange, oppressive day. The hills seemed lowering. The bandar — the monkeys — had disappeared from the trees and all the birds were silent. Any hunter will tell you of the strange silence when the world of nature puts aside its business as a hunt begins, but this was a more intense silence than any I had ever felt. I worried that it might affect the bearers' nerves. And though I had no doubt as to his courage, I saw the sweat of Sher Ali's face. I could not see my own, but I felt my heart beating faster than I liked. Sher Ali was my gun and I gave silent thanks that he was an Afridi and from what I knew of that breed — for we had taken tea with them many times on the Northwest Frontier — he would die a thousand deaths before he gave way to any fear he felt, least of all in front of these eastern hillmen.
I felt danger very near in that silence as we set out from the camp in the early morning light. For the sake of all our people's morale, as the French call it, we wore our uniforms and, not much more practically, or so I thought at the time, I ordered the guns to be loaded and cocked then and there. I would not be writing these words today if I had not obeyed that second impulse.