(By special arrangement with the writer.)
When I left home I promised to bring back a necklace of tiger-claws of my own shooting. 'This was the result of a conversation about "Mr. Isaacs." It is just as easy to promise one thing as another, and when you are handling a brand-new' Express rifle in your den at home you positively ache for the moment which. shall bring you face to face with the sportsman's king of beasts. When the moment really comes the ache is apt to be of a different kind. But this is to anticipate. At any rate, I promised the claws, I bore the promise constantly in mind, and I looked upon the moose and bears and wolves which fell to that rifle merely as training for its fulfilment.
But I soon found that even in tiger-lands tigers are not so common as one's imagi tio at home pictures them. And moreover, whenever there is a tiger there are a hundred men of his locality bent on trapping him, or snaring him with bird-lime, or, needs must, on shooting him. My frst hopes were set on Viadivostock. There are the woolliest tigers in the world, and before reaching there I was full of stories of how they were in the habit of coming into the back yard for the scraps, and how men never walked abroad at night in parties of less than a dozen, all armed to the teeth. But once in Russian Tartary, T found the tiger was a tradition, and the Jeading merchant told me he had standing orders from three different high officials to buyanytiger-skin that came into the warker, at almost any price. So I transferred my hopes to Corea. Was not the tiger a sort of national emblem of the Hermit Kingdom 'And is there not a special caste of tiger-hunters, the very men who once gave such thrashing to' French landing-party In a ride across the country, therefore, I might well hope for a chance. From sea to sea, however, I never caught sight of even the hunter; only with much ditticulty did I succeed in finding and buying one.
r skin, and the most satisfactory response I could get to my earnest enquiries was the information, "There are two seasons in Corea; one in which the man hunts the tiger, the other in which the tiger hunts the man. It is uow the latter, therefore, you must come at another time." So in Northern China, so too in Tongkit though there I actually saw a tigers foot print at the entrance toa coal mine. There remained, as I thought, only Java and India between me and the unpleasant results of a broken promise, At the entrance to the river of Saigon, the French capital of Cochin-China, and forty miles from the city, there is a lonely telegraph station, where the English cable from Hongkong and Singapore, and the French cable to Tongking, touch ground, As I am much interested in telegraphy and I havea circular letter of introduction from Sir James Anderson, the Managing Direc-for of the Kastern Extension Telegraph Company, I determined to pay these exiled electricians a visit. And then Learned that twelve years ago an operator had shot a tiger that came on the verandah and looked in at the window while he was at work, and that three months ago another had been killed in amore orthodox way. So when the next steamer of the Messageries Maritimes picked up her pilot at four a.m. off Cape St. James, I tumbled with my things into his boat and was rowed ashore as the ship's sidelights disappeared in the distance and the lighthouse began to grow pale in the sunrise. My fellow-passengers of the Iraouaddy rose from their mattresses on deck to wish me good-luck, but they looked upon me as a more than usually mad Englishman to on such a fool's errand, and my jovial friend, Captain Bretel, said just before 1 got over the "Phere are no tigers here, mon ami." But," I expostulated, "there was one shot there the other day."
Purfaitement, but that was the last It isa curious little colony at Cape St. James, a dozen Englishmen for the service of the English cable, three or four Frenchmen for the French cable, half a dozen pilots, and a hotel sanitarium where nobody comes. The electricians get their supplies in a launch from Saigon every Sunday morning and for the rest of the week their only communication with the great world is by the zig-zag line which trickles interminably out of the tiny siphon of Sir William 'Thompson's recorder. And this tells them little, for even news messages here come in code, The great French mail steamers pass them twice a week and the few other steamers which ply to Saigon for rice pick up' a pilot. The Company keep them well supplied with newspapers and they have an excellent billiard table, but their life is not a happy one. On Sundays, when the fresh supplies are in, they feast. On Monday they feast again, for all meat must be cooked at once. On Tuesday, cold meat, On Wednesday, hash. On Thursday, back to tinned meats, and by Friday there is probably neither bread nor ice at the Cape. Then, too, itis a terrible climate and fever makes its regular round among them. Their pale faces, scarred with prickly heat and other physical nuisances of a damp tropical climate, are a painful reminder that our convenient telegrams, like everything else that we enjoy, mean sacrifices on somebody's part. But they are transferred sooner or later and their very lone-lines makes them extremely hospitable, To return, however, to the tigers. The chance of one, I found, was decidedly slim. The local Nimrod, Mr. Self, had spent nearly all his spare time for two years in trying to get one, had built innumerable ''miradors" and sacrificed dozens of buffaloes, dogs, goats and pigs. And two months ago he had had his frat and only success, shooting a splendid beast. Except the one killed by accident twelve years before, no other tiger had ever been shot here by european. I had come to try, however, and next morning an Annamite hunter who had been sent out by Mr. Langdon, the Superintendent of the Station, to look for tracks, returned and reported that he had built a "mirador" and we were to make our first attempt that evening. Whether there was any like-hood of a tiger or not, he declined to say, and conversation with him was a difficult privilege, first, because he only spoke a few words of English and a few words of French, and second, because he was stone deaf. Then he went away to sleep, I looked over my rifle and tried to do the same, and at half-past five that afternoon we started, Mitt (that was his name or nickname) walking and running ahead and I following him on a pony.
For a time we followed a road through the woods and then struck off into the bush. An hour later Mitt laid down his rifle and motioned me to dismount. A coolie waiting for us jumped into the saddle and galloped off. We were on a small rising ground, dotted with bushes in the middle of a rough tangle of forest and brushwood. I looked everywhere for the "'mirador" and not finding it, I yelled an enquiry into Mitt's ear. He pointed to a tree fifty yards away and I saw how marvellously he had concealed it. He had chosen two slim trees growing four feet apart, behind these he had planted two bamboos at the other corners of the square, and then he had led two or three thickly leaved creepers from the ground and wound them in and around and over a little platform and roof, till he had made a perfect nest of live foliage. The floor was about twenty feet from the ground and it looked perilously fragile to hold two men, But it was a masterpiece of hunting craft. In response to " peculiar ery from Mitt two natives appeared with a little black pig slung on a pole, yelling lustily. The "tmirador" (or mechan " as I believe it is called in India) overlooked a slight depression in which an oblong pond had been constructed for the buffaloes to wallow in, as these ugly brutes cannot work unless they are allowed to soak themselves in water two or three times aday. By the side of this Master Piggy was securely fastened, neck and hi between two stakes, to his infinite dis Then the two natives took themselves off with their pole, Mitt gave me a "leg up" into the mirador," which shook and swayed as we climbed gingerly in, and we arranged ourselves for our long watch, A soft cap instead of the big sun-helmet, the bottle of cold tea and the flask put handy, half a dozen cartridges laid out, the nite loaded and cocked. The rest is silence."
To get an idea of what it la to watch like this, lay a dozen billiard cues side by side on the floor, an inch apart, squat cross-legged upon them with a crowbar in your lap, and sit 80, without moving, for eleven hours, with your eyes glued to a mousehole. ' The position is torture, the time is interminable, the strain is intense, the mosquitoes are devilish, and at last, when you have quite made up your mind that there is no tiger within ten miles, you begin to feel li You look at your watch and determine you will not touch it again for an hour, Then you try to recall everything you have recently forgotten. You repeat to yourself along poem, At last after several such expedients you are sure some two hours have elapsed. You look at your watch. Fifteen minutes! We loaded our rifles at half- Till half-Baddhas. Then five wid pig came trotting ast ten we sat side by side like two stone
down to the water to drink, which was an intensely welcome break in the monotony. At half past eleven Mitt made signs to me to go to sleep for a while and he would watch. At half-past twelve ho woke me and immediately fell back in his turn, fast asleep. The rest, and the consciousness that [had no longer the sharp eyes of my companion to rely upon, made me doubly attentive, and T watched every twig. It had been moonlight, but the moon was now hidden behind clouds. On the horizon before me broad flash's of summer lightning were playing. There was a chorus of frogsin the distance, night-birds were calling to one another, the great lizards were making extraordinary and grotesque noises, and it was so dark that I could no longer discern the black patch of the pig's body on the ground twenty yards away. Not a single glimmer was reflected on the diamond sights Messrs. Bland had given me, and I could scarcely see the chalked rib of my
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.