A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.

Waikato Times, Volume 2656, Issue 2656, 20 July 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.

It was recently mentioned that a young Forest officer had shot a man-eating tigress, near Chakrata, that had been the terror of the neighbourhood she haunted. A writer in the Civil and Military Gazette relates the particulars of a scene in which this tigress took tho chief part some six years ago that was witnessed by some

Punjabi sawyers. These men were, he says, on their way home from the forest in which they had been employed, and had arrived at the chowki at Loqunr, in Jounsar. Tho narrator then goes on : — "It was not the 'dead hour of midnight, when churchyard yarns,' etc., but early in the evening, say 9 or 10 o'clock, when the occupants of the hut were suddenly roused by tho death crics of ono of their comrades who was being forcibly dragged out by his heels through an opening in the grass and wattlo side of the hut. They all rushed out, and to their dismay and horror saw the man-eater of the hills calmly carrying off their unfortunate friend to the bed of the stream a short [ distance below, from which direction two young cubs were now distinctly soen advancing. The sawyers had no weapons with them, yet they made a bold attempt to effect a rescue. They followed and yelled, threw stones and flourished firebrands in her face ; but she never relinquished her hold till she reached the cubs. Then suddenly dropping tho now unconscious man, she burned savagely and scattered her pursuers. After this, thinking their late comrade dead and beyond human aid, they considered discretion the better part of valour, and immediately swarmed up the nearest trees. Here they intended to wait patiently for daylight. It was a soft summer sight, with scattered fleecy clouds about, which occasionally obscured the otherwise brilliant moon-lit scene beneath. The men had not been long in their coign of vantage, when they were made the unwilling witnesses of a most ghastly tragec'y. The tigress went back after charging, and stood over the prostrate form of her victim, and purred in a catlike self-complacent way to her cubs, who were romping about and rolling over the apparently lifeless body. She then lay down a few yards off, and with blinking eyes watched the gambols of her young progeny. Somehow the watchers in the trees thought they saw the body move. Yes, the man was still a'ive, and in a few moments sat up and tried to beat the young brutes off. They were too young to hold him down, so he made a desperate attempt to shake himself free, and started off at a run. But before the poor man had gone twenty yards the tigress bounded out, and brought him back to the cubs once more. And the doomed wretch had to defend himself over again from their playful but rough attacks. He made two or three more attempts to regain his freedom, but was seized by the old tigress and brought back each time before he had gone many yards. Ilis groans and cries for help were heartrending, but the others on tho trees were paralysed with fear and quite unable to move. At last the tigress herself joined in the gambols of her cubs, and the wretched man was thrown about and tossed over her head, exactly as many of us have seen our domestic puss throw rats and mice about before beginning her meal on them. The man's efforts at escape grew feebler and feebler. The last time they saw hiin try to get away was on his hands and knees toward a large fig tree, with the cubs clinging to his limbs. His final attempt was as futile as the rest, as the tigress brought him back once again, and then she calmly held him down under her forepaws and deliberately began her living meal before their eyes ! Beyond a few groans, they heard nothing more—the man had happily fainted."