When to let a Tiger chew your arm!

1863.  Desperate Tiger Hunt.  My dear Robert,-I have just half an hour to write an overland letter, and it is a very short time to do it in.  Why have I left it so late?  I will tell you.  About a week ago I got a letter telling me that my dear old friend Bradford had been “mauled” by a tiger, and six hours after this letter I was on my way to Augur.  Since I last wrote I have had one friend killed, and another severely injured by tigers.  …  Then poor Bradford has been “mauled” to use the cant phrase of the tiger shooters.  It was thus:- The Goorah hunting party had killed 18 tigers without a casualty, when Bradford and Captain Curtis (Inneskillings) left the party, their leave being up, and started for Augur.  At a place called Degloupoor they heard of a tiger, and made arrangements for a hunt.  Bradford occupied a tree that bent over some water, and his feet were about 10 feet off the ground; Curtis occupied another tree, and a certain Sowar a third.  Sowar got the shot and hit a large old tiger.  It came towards Bradford’s tree, when B. cocked him with both barrels.  The beast came on with a rush at B.’s tree, and stopped for a moment underneath it.  Bradford pulled the triggers of his second gun, but a twig of the tree had got between the hammers, and they fell on the twig instead of on the percussion tubes – for it was a percussion tube gun; so the gun missed, and B. was by this accident momentarily helpless.  Now ensued a very strange and terrible scene.  The tiger is not a climbing beast, the leopard is, but the tiger has rarely been known to climb.  After poor dear Bradford had vainly pulled his trigger, the beast after glaring at him for an instant leaped into the tree and commenced climbing and scrambling up to him like a cat.  Whereon Bradford dropped off the tree into the water below and tried to hide in some bushes near.  The beast followed sharp and boned poor Bradford in the water, nearly drowning him in it.  Curtis of the dragoons, was in a tree about 15 yards off and saw this part of the scene, but he scarcely dared to shoot, for the beast and its victim were so close together that he feared lest he should hit Bradford.  The tiger now dragged Bradford out to the bank, and lying on its side and whisking its great tail about, began to pat and play with my old friend just as a cat does with a mouse, occasionally taking his arm in its mouth, and giving him a crunch.  Poor Bradford had his wits about him all the time, and kept quiet; merely sparring with his arm at the beast as it showed inclinations to catch at his neck.  At this the beast would take the arm into his mouth, and chew it.  But during this the relative positions of man and beast had changed, so that Curtis, a very brave and cool fellow, let drive three or four shells into the tiger as he could, though as he said afterwards, “I was awfully afraid once that I had shot Bradford,”  These shells sickened the tiger, which left Bradford after fetching him “a crack over the head with its paw, and lay down bleeding profusely in a neighbouring bush.  Curtis now descended, when poor Bradford called out, “don’t come near, he is a regular brute.”  A native ghikarry, of Bradford’s. dodging about, got a glimpse at the brute just at this time and killed him with a shot in the neck.  Curtis now put Bradford on a bedstead, and commenced taking him into Augur, sending a horseman in for the doctor.  He (Dr Beaumont), set off at once, and found the party 35 miles from Augur.  Bradford, who had kept up wonderfully, had begged Curtis to cut off the limb, which gave him much torment, and I believe that Curtis would have done so, “but,” said he to me, “I don’t know what I should have done to stop the bleeding, you see.”  Beaumont found the arm in a most dreadful state, as the shoulder joint had been opened by the brute’s fangs, so, assisted by Curtis, who was as good as a doctor, said Beaumont, he removed the left arm at the shoulder joint, and they took the poor fellow into Augur, where I found him 24 hours after I had heard of the accident, having done 60 miles in express mail carts, and 30 more on Sowar’s horses.  I remained there about 40 hours, and when I left the patient was doing very fairly, and has been progressing well since, as out letters tell us.