Tiger, Tiger
Malaya in the late 1960s was at last casting off the yoke of British colonial rule. But Harry ‘Tiger’ Sullivan, a retired military officer, had made his career in Malaya for almost two decades had nowhere else to go.Well respected for his distinguished military service, and even more so for his legendary skill in tracking and killing man-eating tigers, Harry Sullivan’s life was a comfortable and well-ordered one, until the arrival of Bob Beresford, a brash and handsome Australian.Melissa Tremayne, an eighteen-year-old British expatriate bored with the slow pace of life in Malaya, had always been like the daughter Sullivan never had, but one look at Bob Beresford makes Melissa determined to win his not-so-fatherly affection.The rivalry between the two men intensifies with the sudden appearance of a man-eating tiger, emerging from the jungle at unpredictable intervals to attach and terrorise Malayan villagers. Bob wants the glory of killing the beast, while Melissa is pursuing a different kind of trophy – Bob himself. Sullivan finds himself drawn into a trial of manhood that he is unwilling to undertake. The tension builds steadily towards a thrilling climax in the Malayan jungle.
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Tiger, Tiger
Philip Caveney
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
First published in 1984 by Granada Publishing
Copyright © Philip Caveney 1984
Philip Caveney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780246124739
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2015 ISBN: 9780008133283
Version: 2015-04-15
A glossary of foreign terms is provided at the end of the book
Contents
The afternoon sun was still fierce. Haji lay stretched out in the shade of a bamboo thicket, his head resting on his great paws. Aligned with the shadows cast through the bamboo screen, the jet-black stripes that crisscrossed his tawny body served to render him virtually invisible. He lay stock-still, but for all that he was not comfortable. There was a dull ache of hunger in the pit of his stomach and his right forepaw throbbed relentlessly where the spines of a tok landak had struck him some weeks ago. He had long since chewed the protruding ends away, but the barbed heads had remained buried deep in the flesh of his foot, where they had begun to suppurate. The earlier agonizing pain had given way to a constant nagging ache that was with him every moment of the day and night.
He was an old tiger, and sixteen years of prowling swamps and jungles without serious harm should have taught him more caution. But the hunting had been bad for a long time now and the porcupine’s succulent flesh had been a tempting proposition. Perhaps Haji was simply not as fast as he had once been. At any rate, in attempting to flip the spiny creature over onto its back to expose the vulnerable underbelly, something had gone wrong. The tok landak had scuttled away to safety, leaving Haji roaring with pain and frustration. Since then, the hunting had not got any easier.
Haji lifted his head slightly and stared through the screen of bushes into the kampong, twenty yards to his right. A large group of Upright cubs were playing a noisy game of Sepak Takraw, kicking a rattan ball to each other over an improvised net. The cubs were very skilful and the ball rarely touched the ground. The frenzied cries and shouts of their strange squeaky language echoed on the still air. Haji’s yellow eyes took in every movement. He watched with curiosity and a little fear; he feared the Uprights as he feared anything which he did not readily understand, but something had called him from the depths of the jungle this day and he had forsaken the constant hunt for food in order to travel out into patches of secondary jungle and scrub. He knew he would not rest easy until it was done. Now, here he lay, closer to the Uprights’ lair than he had ever been, and there was nothing for him to do but lie silent and still while he watched.
The Uprights had always mystified him: these strange hairless creatures that walked on two legs, possessed incredible powers, could march around the jungle, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a bigger and stronger creature was lying mere inches from where their tiny feet trod. On the few occasions when Haji had actually made his presence known, the Uprights had all reacted in a variety of extraordinary ways. Some had simply fled, howling and screaming in a most curious fashion, while others had clambered clumsily onto the branches of nearby trees. Most confusing of all, two of these uprights had on separate occasions produced some black sticks that roared fire at Haji, a moving fire that seemed to tear at the bushes and earth, shattering it into abrupt movement. On these two misadventures, it had been Haji who chose to run away, for such things were not then within the range of his experience. He knew now that the black sticks carried death to those animals who did not run quite fast enough, though he could not comprehend how such a thing might be brought about. Once, while Haji had been painstakingly stalking a large
