The opium clippers / by Basil Lubbock.

  • Lubbock, Basil, 1876-1944.
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The opium clippers / by Basil Lubbock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Tiger Island swamped by a Cyclone. Until the cyclone at the Sunderbunds in May, 1842, Saugor Island, which was known to sailors as Tiger Island, was always given a wide berth by ships’ boats, owing to the number of wild beasts upon it, specially tigers, leopards, hyenas and jackals. Every ship that sailed up the Hooghly had some gruesome yarn or other to tell about Tiger Island. The most generally told was the one about the burial party. They were busy interring a comrade in the sand above high water mark when with a terrific roar a tiger leapt out of the jungle, for a moment sniffed disdainfully at the corpse sewn up in its hammock, and then seized upon the most fleshy seaman and disappeared with the screeching man in his jaws. Another story told is of two natives paddling by in their dugout at a time when food was very scarce on the island. A tiger actually swam out to the boat, swamped it with a blow of his paw, and bore off one of the men to his lair in the jungle. A similar experience happened to the long-boat of the schooner Time. Captain Pybus arrived at Saugor with some very important news of the opium market, which he wished to get to his agent as quickly as possible. To save time he lowered the long-boat, and putting her in charge of the second mate told him to track the boat up the river, going night and day. But whilst they were tracking along the shore of Tiger Island, a tiger sprang out and carried off one of the Lascars. The second mate and his boat’s crew were so scared that they all jumped into the boat and rowed up to Calcutta, taking care to keep well out in the stream, especially at night. The result of this cowardly behaviour was that the second mate took ten days delivering his captain’s letter at Calcutta and the Time lost her market. There was no chance of anyone being able to sleep aboard a vessel that brought up for the night off Tiger Island, for the howling of the jackals, the scream of the hyenas, and the earth-shaking roar of the tigers as they prowled the jungle in search of food, not only stopped all slumber but gave everyone a strange feeling of nervous disquiet and horror. Then in May came the cyclone and inundation which at the