When I told a man once that tigers and cobras, between them, made away
with 25,000 human beings in India every year, he thought I was joking.
"Why," said he, "surely one fifth of the human race--325,000,000, at
any rate--is packed into that triangle! Where can the tigers live?"
But I underestimated it; there were just 24,938 killed in 1906 by
tigers alone. You can see it yourself in the government records.

Now, as District Officer, I'm the "father" of two million souls, and
responsible for all things, from murder to measles. But this was
beyond me. It was a Commissioner's job, backed by the Maharaja.

The man-eaters, now propitiated as gods, had taken toll of my
villagers for two long years. The people were in abject terror, for
none knew the day, hour, or place of the monsters' next leap. Many
were already resigned to death. "It's written on our foreheads," they
said, with gentle misery. Poor devils! Think of the two hundred
millions of them in India oscillating between mere existence and
positive starvation; not living, but just strong enough to crawl along
on the edge of death!

I called the _tahsildar_: "Bring me the record of these tigers."

A bulky file of horrors, in truth! Here a goatherd was taken; there it
was an old woman gathering sticks in the jungle, or children playing
in the village street, or maybe girls going down to the river for
water, laughing joyously, unaware of the great green eyes that watched
them through the towering stalks of elephant-grass; and last among the
victims came some desperate young men who had faced one of the
creatures with fish-spears.