Kitabı oku: «The Three Sapphires», sayfa 11
Chapter XV
Swinton had left instructions to be wakened before the first raucous-voiced crow had opened his piratical beak, so, in the chill dawn half light, a grey mist from the river bed still hovering like a shroud over the plain, the voice of his bearer calling softly: "Sahe-e-b! Sahe-e-b!" brought him out of a deep slumber. Dressing, he chuckled over the apocryphal sprained ankle that had relieved him of Lord Victor's company or offer of it. Passing that young nobleman's room, lamp in hand, he saw, through the open door, a very red ankle, devoid of its bandage, hanging over the bed. Swinton chuckled, muttering: "Bad patient!"
His horse was waiting, and with a rifle across the saddle he went up the hill, meeting Finnerty, with whom was Mahadua, at the appointed place.
"We'll leave our gee-gees here with the syces," Finnerty said, "and Mahadua will take us by a shortcut path along the edge of the hill to Jadoo Pool."
At Jadoo Pool, they rested while Mahadua, as keen as a "black tracker," searched the ground for the leopard's trail.
Finnerty had imparted to the shikari nothing beyond the fact that a leopard had been seen in that immediate vicinity, and it was supposed he was wounded. The shikari had declared emphatically that it would prove to be the leopard with the man-eater's rosettes, and, no doubt, was the animal that came out of the cave, giving rise to the belief that a ghost homed there.
First, Mahadua passed to the plastic clay banks of the little stream that trickled into the pool; there he picked up the pugs of a leopard, following them unerringly to where the cunning brute had backed away and circled when he saw Finnerty in the machan. On this circling trail a stick freshly turned, a nestlike hollow in the loose leaves where a soft paw had pushed, guided the tracker, so close to instinct in his faculties, till he came upon blood spots and torn-up earth where the leopard had been shot.
For twenty minutes Finnerty and Swinton waited, and then Mahadua came back, saying: "Chita has been shot in a hind leg, for his jumps in running are not big, and though he went to the deep jungle at first he is now back at the cave."
As they went up Jadoo Nala there were no blood spots on its stony bed, but Mahadua explained: "Chita remained hid in the jungle for a time, and the bleeding stopped."
Coming to the doorlike entrance of the cave, Finnerty peered cautiously in, and, seeing nothing, passed beyond, his eyes searching for tracks. A dozen paces and a sibilant whistle from behind whirled him about to see Mahadua facing the opening, his little axe poised for a blow of defence.
When Finnerty, cocking both barrels of his Paradox, raced back, the shikari said: "Chita stuck his head out to look at the sahib's back, but when I whistled he disappeared."
"Was it 'Spots' or a black leopard, Mahadua?"
"Black, sahib," he answered.
"A black leopard is the most vicious thing on earth," Finnerty said in English, his gun holding guard, "and one wounded and in a cave is a matter for consideration."
"He won't come out; that's sure," Swinton commented.
"Not before night – if we're here – and we can't afford the time to wait that long."
"Smoke him out," Swinton suggested.
"Difficult; smoke won't go where you want it to, but I'll ask Mahadua if it's possible."
"The cave is too big," the shikari replied to the query.
"How big?" Swinton asked with sudden interest.
"I don't know," and the native's eyes were evasive. "I have heard it said that the cave went far in, but I have no desire to go into the home of the spirits."
"My Rampore hounds would draw him," Finnerty said thoughtfully; "but I don't want to get them mauled – perhaps killed."
The name Rampore conveyed to Mahadua the sahib's meaning, though the English words were unintelligible. "The Banjara would send in dogs if the sahib would pay him well," he suggested.
"He would not risk his Banjara hounds," the major objected.
"True, huzoor, but he also has 'bobbery' dogs – half Banjara breed – and they being trained to the hunt will go in after the wounded chita."
"It's a good idea, Swinton," Finnerty declared. "We've done the very thing I was bucking about last night; we've set adrift a wounded leopard who'll likely turn man-eater if he doesn't die and we'll be responsible for every native he kills."
"We've simply got to finish him off," Swinton concurred.
"We must. If you'll wait here with the shikari, keeping your eye on that hole so he doesn't sneak away, I'll pick up my horse and gallop down to get the Banjara and his 'bobbery pack.'"
Perhaps the going of Finnerty, with his large virility, had taken something of mental sustenance from the shikari, for he now lost somewhat his buoyant nonchalance.
"Sit you here, sahib, on this flat rock," he advised, "for here you face well the cave door, and if the evil brute makes a sudden rush you will have an advantage. As to the dogs, if it is a bhut they will not enter the cave, and if they do enter it will be because the spirit has gone."
"But, Mahadua, we saw him. How will he disappear through the rock walls of a cave?"
"As to the ways of a bhut not even the priest at my village of Gaum could say aught."
"Did you ever see a spirit, Mahadua?" Swinton queried, with the double purpose of whiling away the time as they waited and drawing from the man one of those eerie tales that originate with the half-wild forest dwellers.
"Sahib, I never saw my father, but there is no doubt that I had one; it was said that he died before I was born, and I believe it."
"Well, did you then know of one from people you believed in?"
"Yes, sahib. The priest of Gaum, which is my village, knew well the tiger that was named the 'One Who Looks Up.' You know, sahib, a tiger when he walks through the jungle never looks up at the trees, there being nothing there in the way of his food nor that he fears; though if he be shot at from a machan, after that, if he catches in his nostrils the taint of a sahib, he will remember, and will see such a trap."
"Tell me of the One Who Looks Up," Swinton begged.
"He was a man-killer, Sahib, and one day he killed a woodsman, but was disturbed before he had eaten the poor fellow, and went away, the man's bhut going with him. A Dep'ty Sahib had a machan put in a tree above the body, and sitting there in the moonlight he saw bagh creeping toward his victim; but before the Dep'ty Sahib could shoot the dead man's arm lifted up, and a finger pointed at the machan. Bagh looked up, and seeing the Dep'ty Sahib fled."
The shikari's voice suddenly dropped to a whisper, and without the move of a muscle he said: "Look at the cave mouth and you will see chita watching you. Move very slow and you may get a shot."
Swinton's gun was lying across his knee, and gently pulling back the hammers he slowly carried the stock toward his shoulder. As their eyes met, the leopard's lip curled in a snarl that bared his hooked fangs, and his ears flattened back, giving the head a cobra-like look. Inch by inch the gun crept upward, the unblinking eyes viewing this move with malevolent interest.
As the stock touched Swinton's shoulder he drooped his head to train his eye along the sights, for the shot must go true to the small brain beneath that sloping skull, or, stung by the wound, the leopard would charge and there would be no escape from a mauling; but his eye, travelling along the barrels, looked into the dark void of the cave. In a brief second the cunning beast had vanished.
"He will not return for some time, sahib; he knows what a gun is. Perhaps even it is a spirit," the shikari said.
Dropping the gun to his knee Swinton asked: "What was the end of the One Who Looks Up?"
"The Dep'ty Sahib was a man of resource, and coming down he pegged to the ground both arms of the one whose bhut had gone with the tiger; then, as he waited in the machan, the tiger came back, thinking the sahib would have gone, and, as the dead man gave him no sign, crept close up, when the Dep'ty Sahib killed him."
"And you believe that story is true, Mahadua?"
"The guru says it is; but whether it is true or not matters only to the one who is devoured."
For some time Mahadua sat facing the cave, turning over in his mind a little business venture; then raising his head, he looked into Swinton's dead-blue eyes, only to turn away in blinking haste before their disconcerting inertia. He coughed, adjusted his little brown cap, and said: "Sahib, as to this one in the cave we shall know when the dogs come if it is a spirit; but if we had made an offering to the shrine, or even promised Safed Jan, who guards the mountain pass, a goat in sacrifice, all might have been well."
"It is too late now," Swinton suggested.
"If the sahib will bestow a silver rupee for the sacrifice of a goat to Safed Jan, Mahadua will make a ceremony over the gun and the bullet will not be turned by the spirit."
Swinton smiled at this wily touch while the man's master was away, but drawing forth a rupee he bestowed it upon the man who had capitalised a spirit. Very gravely Mahadua plucked a handful of grass, and, wrapping the coin in this, rubbed it along the barrels of Swinton's gun, tapped the locks with it, and then slipped the rupee into his jacket pocket, saying in a voice blithesome with relief – or cupidity: "If Safad Jan has observed, luck will follow."
Pariah-like yowls came up the pass, and Finnerty, with the herdsman and his brother holding in leash six dogs, appeared. The pack was a motley one, a canine kaleidoscope that, as it tumbled in the sunshine, showed all the various hues of ancestry from red Irish terrier to mizzled collie. One had a bulldog head and the lank, scraggy body of a village pariah; two had the powerfully boned frame of the Banjara hound; but all showed the uncertain, treacherous temper of their pariah cross.
Each dog was held by a rawhide leash fastened to a wide leather collar studded with iron spikes to prevent a leopard from taking his favourite jugular-severing jaw grip of the neck.
As he sat down for a minute's rest, the major said: "I fancy this may cost me a pretty penny for my friend, the herdsman, has made me agree to pay ten rupees for each dog killed, and five apiece for the mauled ones. He was deuced curious over the night's work, but I told him we saw no one. He admitted that he didn't deliver the note to Lord Victor, saying he had lost it."
"Do you think by any chance he had an inkling Lord Victor was going there, and didn't want him to know we'd be there?"
"No. He says we saw no one because we spoiled the hunt by going like a marriage procession; that we went by the road, and that his brother, the watchman, saw Prince Ananda watching us, both going and coming."
"The sahib will have rested now, and the sun is hot," the Banjara interposed.
Finnerty, rising, placed the men; Swinton behind the flat boulder he had sat on, and from the top of which his gun would range the cave mouth; two convenient trees were allotted to Mahadua, the herdsman, and his brother when the dogs had been slipped. Finnerty would stand on some ground a little higher where he could rake the nala, both up and down, should the leopard bolt.
The dogs had been given a noseful of the leopard's trail, and, when they were slipped, with a chorus of yelps they made for the cave, while their owner slipped nimbly to his allotted tree. It was a tense moment; the Banjara, perched on the lower limb of a mhowa, was avariciously hoping the leopard would kill the whole pack, for at ten rupees a head they were better dead.
Mahadua's face grew grave as, instead of the tumult of a fierce battle, stillness held within the cavern; the eager yelps of the dogs as they had scrambled over lose stones to enter the cave had ceased. The leopard was, no doubt, a spirit, and had perhaps hushed the dogs. At any rate, a flesh-and-blood leopard would now be giving battle and voices of pain and passion would be filling the cavern with cries.
Finnerty was muttering: "Damn if I can make it out; it's a rummy go!"
At that instant the pack came stringing out, and the leader stood looking wonderingly at the sahibs.
"They are afraid," Mahadua jeered; "they went in thinking it was a hare. Oh, they are a true Banjara pack!"
The herdsman put a hand on a long knife in his belt, and with fury in his eyes said: "Will the Presence take a slipper to this monkey's mouth or shall I open its windpipe? The leopard is not within, for my dogs do not lie."
The pack was now running about in the silly, aimless manner of "gaze" dogs where there is no quarry to see, and only a scent that is cold to their very dull nose-sense.
The shikari pointed this out, saying: "Keeper of mud cows, if the leopard had but just passed out in the fear of your coming he would have left a fresh scent trail that even your dogs, who hunt but by the eye, would have found, and if the chita is not a spirit he is still within."
The Banjara drew his long, vicious knife, but as Finnerty grasped his arm he said, pointing in disdain at Mahadua: "This is a knife for game, not for cutting the throat of a chicken; I go into the cave to prove that of dog or shikari the shikari is the liar."
At this his brother also drew a knife, and, calling to the dogs, who sprang at his bidding to the cave, the two Banjaras followed at their heels.
"We might have a look; it's altogether mysterious," Finnerty said, turning to the captain.
The latter nodded. "I've got an idea; we'd better go in!"
They passed into a long, narrow chamber – so long that it reached into deep gloom, with no end wall showing. They could see the dogs pass into the mysterious black shadow beyond and again reappear; always, going and coming, they sniffed at one spot. Here Finnerty struck a match, and Mahadua, dropping to his knees, examined the rock, saying: "The leopard rested here – there is blood."
Led by Finnerty, they followed the dogs along the corridor, coming upon a blank wall. There was no leopard; he had vanished as mystically as a spirit might have done. Finnerty lighted matches, but there were only the sullen walls on three sides.
"It is as I have said," the Banjara growled; "Mahadua, who has grown too old for the hunt, gave forth so much monkey chatter that the sahib saw not the leopard pass."
Mahadua lifted his cap. "See, hunter of cow tics, I take off my head-cover to thee as a great shikari. Sahib," he pleaded, "turn back this owner of mongrels, for I know where the chita will be found."
"Where?" Finnerty questioned.
"He will go up in the hills to the village of Kohima, where he was caught in a trap. It is said he killed many people near that village, for he was a man-eater."
"How far is Kohima?"
"It is six kos, or perhaps eight, and again it might be that it is ten by the road, but the chita will go through the jungle in a matter of half that distance."
The Banjara laughed, clapping a cupped palm over his mouth, giving vent to a note of derision. "The little monkey has a desire in his belly, sahib," he said, ceasing his popping mirth. "The women of Kohima are famed for the arak they distill, so Mahadua, with the sahib to pay for it, would get in a state to see leopards even in the village."
"I think we'd better get rid of this argument," Finnerty remarked, adding: "Come to the bungalow for your pay, Lumbani."
Calling their dogs, the Banjara and his brother departed.
"Now we're up against a mental dead wall, captain. What shall we do?" Finnerty asked.
"You'd like to go after Burra Moti, of course – "
"Yes; but I'd rather pot this black devil. I don't want any natives' blood on my head."
"But we haven't a trail to follow; I believe we'll find that leopard back in his cage."
"Good heavens, man, he couldn't get through the solid wall!"
"But he did."
Finnerty blinked his eyes in unison with his rapid thoughts. A suspicion lingered in his mind that the animal had really slipped from the cave without Swinton seeing him – perhaps through his attention having been taken up by Mahadua. Indeed it was the only reasonable explanation of his astounding disappearance. With boyish diffidence he asked: "Did you and Mahadua do anything; that is, did he take up your attention with – well, he's a garrulous old cuss, especially on spirits."
Swinton in candour related what had occurred, and when he told of the rupee-gun ceremony the major, with a start, exclaimed: "Ah!"
"I know what you mean by that, major," Swinton said, with a little laugh, "but I never took my eyes off that hole in the wall."
But Finnerty shook his head. "Do you know what they call the leopard in every mess in India? – 'The Artful Dodger.'" Then he added hastily: "We'll settle your theory first, captain. On our way back to have some breakfast we'll look in at the zoo, and if there's a black leopard there with a wound it will be the one we're after; if there is one without a wound it will mean that we shot a jungle beast last night; if the cage is empty the brute either slipped your vigilance or is, as Mahadua says, a spirit."
The word leopard being familiar to the servant, he knew what the sahibs were discussing, and contributed: "Our eyes were always on the door, sahib, and if a spirit took the leopard through the walls he would lead him to Kohima, for it is said that all his kills were made through the aid of one he acquired there."
"Come on!" Finnerty said. "We're in a fit condition of mystification to almost accept the little man's thesis."
A strange attendant was at the teakwood gate, but when the major explained that they simply wanted a look at the animals, being sahibs, he swung the gate for their entrance, closing it from the inside to stand near them. The heavily barred cage was empty, and there was no movement in the den behind to which a small door gave entrance.
"Where is the black leopard?" Finnerty asked quite casually.
A frown of reticence clouded the native's face as he answered: "I don't know, sahib."
With a covert movement, the major slipped into the man's fingers a rupee. The gateman coughed, adjusted his belt, and said: "The Burra Sahib, Nawab Darna Singh, sent away the man who was on the gate; that is why I am now here."
"Did the man sleep at his post?"
"It may be that he did, sahib, and that way the black leopard escaped; but he was beaten by the rajah – no doubt he deserved it – and Nawab Darna Singh thinks that in anger he may have freed the dangerous one, for a small door was left open."
"And the leopard has not been seen to-day?"
"No, sahib; but it is said he was shot, by whom or where I have not heard."
Then the two passed through the gate as mystified as when they entered.
"That destroys my solution of the mystery," Swinton declared.
With a laugh, Finnerty said: "Mahadua has the only unassailable belief – that it is a spirit. But now for some breakfast. Our horses are just around the turn. We'll slip over to my bungalow, and while we're eating send down for Lord Victor."
Chapter XVI
When Captain Swinton and Major Finnerty arrived at the bungalow a note was sent to Lord Victor asking him to come up on horseback, as they were going off into the jungle.
Knowing that servants' ears were animate dictaphones, the two sahibs ate breakfast in comparative silence, the strenuous morning after the black leopard having braced their appetites.
Later, at restful ease in big chairs, the major said: "In this accursed land of spies one must find a place where his eyes reach farther than his voice. That, by the way, was a trick of a clever tiger I killed, the Gharwalla man-eater, through discovering that when he had made a kill he would drag the body to a certain bare hilltop from which he could watch for danger. He'd been driven up to a gun so often that he was shy of secret places. There was something grewsome about that tiger's fiendish cunning. His favourite trick was to crouch in cover that overhung a roadway, and as a bullock cart came along pick off the driver with a flying leap and carry him to this hilltop for a leisurely meal. There was a pool close by, and, after eating, he would take a drink, roll in the sand, and then go quite a mile to thick cover for a sleep. I potted him when he was having one of his sand baths. You've seen a dog roll on a rug in the ecstasy of a full stomach, but with this chap there was something wondrously beautiful – if one could forget the horribleness of it – in the play of those terrible muscles and the undulating curves of the striped body as he rolled in luxurious ease, paws fanning the air and his ivory-studded jaws showing in an after dinner yawn. I watched him for ten minutes, fascinated by the charm of subtle movement combined with strength, for I was well hidden in a thick growth of rose bramble, its mottled colouring of pink and grey and green deceiving his quick eye. I was lying flat, my 10-bore covering him. When I gave a low whistle the big head faced me, and the eyes, hardened to a yellow-green murder look, were straight on. But just below the jaw was a spot with no hard skull to deflect the heavy, soft-lead ball, and behind that feathered curl of white hair was the motor of that powerful machine – the heart. He never knew what struck him. The whole cavity was just pulp – heart and lungs – when we skinned him."
A native who had come in from the jungle now came to the verandah. "Huzoor," he began, "we knew that Burra Moti was near in the night, for Raj Bahadar was restless, cocking his ears and making soft speech through his trunk to the cunning old lady; but maybe on account of the camp fire, which we had lighted to show her that it was but a party of men who would eat and had sweet cakes for elephants who approached in a friendly spirit, she came not in. We could hear the bell tinkle, tinkle, tinkle – "
"You fool! Why do you mix lies in your report; the elephant had no bell."
Undismayed, the man answered: "The mahout maintained as much, sahib, but we all heard the bell, and Moti was in a sweet temper, for she laughed, as elephants do when they are pleased."
"It was a bird you heard – the sweet-singing shama, or a chakwa calling to his mate across a stream. Did you see her?"
"It was still dark, but we could hear Moti sigh as though her heart was troubled because she could not come to partake of the cakes we burned so that they would be known in her nostrils."
"Couldn't come! She was free."
"As to a chain, it is true; but the sahib knows that evil attaches to things that are sacred of a temple when they have fallen into the hands of others."
"Speak!" Finnerty commanded, as the native hesitated.
"It is said – perhaps it is but a rumour of the bazaar – that Moti was of a temple up in the hills, and that in the bell was a sacred sapphire."
"But how came Moti to my place? Know you that, sage one?"
The native dismissed the sarcasm with a salaam, answering: "It is said that the temple was looted of jewels that were buried beneath a pillar."
With a start, Finnerty asked: "And the stone pillar – was it taken?" And he laughed as if in derision.
"I have heard that the pillar is in a new place, sahib."
"Is it in the prince's grounds?" And Finnerty swept an arm toward the palace hill.
"There is a stone standing there that did not grow with the roses," the native answered enigmatically.
"Just another move in our deranged friend's plot," Finnerty commented. He turned to the native: "Was the lama of the temple killed?"
"Men who are dead do not come to the market place to complain, and as the priest has not spoken it may be that he is dead."
"Here comes our friend in perpetuity, the Banjara!" Finnerty exclaimed. He rose, and, going into the bungalow, returned to drop a rupee in the native's hand, saying: "Go back to Raj Bahadar and tell the mahout I will be along shortly." He turned to the captain.
"Swinton, all one's servants may know the thing a man is risking his life to discover and he be none the wiser till some one babbles it like a child."
"As in the mutiny," Swinton suggested. "Our officials saw cow dung plastered on the trees – some few heard what they called 'silly whispers,' but all native India knew, and all India remained hushed till the dead silence was shattered by the tornado."
"Exactly. And while we say Ananda is insane, and all these things are child's play, think of the trifling things that were used as factors to breed that holocaust of hate. The Mussulmans told that the British Raj had greased the cartridges they had to bite with pig's fat to defile their religion; that suttee had been abolished to break the Hindu faith by filling the land with widow prostitutes; that water the Hindu sepoys drank had come in contact with leather valves made from the skin of a cow. There were other trivial things lied into mountains of sins. Ananda knows all that; he has the cunning of a serpent and the viciousness of a black leopard."
The Banjara had arrived, and Finnerty counted out five rupees; then, with a touch of Irish humour, he added another, saying, with a smile: "This for your disappointment in not having a dog killed."
"If the monkey man, Mahadua, had been true to his caste, which is to watch and not talk, there would have been profit for both sides – the sahib would have obtained a kill."
When he had tucked away his money, the Banjara said: "My brother is not now keeper at the tiger garden."
"Why? For whose sin does he suffer?"
"Darna Singh let the black leopard out to meet Rajah Ananda at Jadoo Pool."
"The rajah wasn't there," Finnerty declared in a drawling way.
"No; there was some talk that was either a lie or a mistake; it was another at the pool."
"Who?"
"The horse of the young sahib was found on the hill, and the mem-sahib was seen between the pool and her bungalow."
"A ghost story, Banjara, and it's all finished."
"A bullock that is dead is dead, but a herdsman watches that the other bullocks do not also die from the same thing."
"I trust you, Banjara," Finnerty said, seemingly at an irrelevant angle.
"The mem-sahib rides every day up into the hills, and the roads are not good for pleasure. Packets of cotton that have stomachs come down over the road; cotton grows here."
"What has cotton to do with the one who rides?"
"Perhaps the mem-sahib rides to meet the one who comes behind the packets. My brother, who was the son of a Banjara priest, one who had visions that all the tribe believed, has also had a vision. Perhaps the beating caused a fever, for visions come thus."
"What saw he?" Finnerty asked, knowing that the herdsman had something of moment to tell in this way.
"There was a full moon in the sky, and by its light he saw a rajah, and the rajah had many guns and soldiers – even sahibs as soldiers – and he was driving out the English. And the guns were hidden behind bales of cotton."
"Is that all?" Finnerty asked, for the herdsman had stopped.
"My brother woke at that point, huzoor, and his eyes fell upon a mhowa tree in full bloom."
"Which means that the mhowa is in bloom now?"
"Of the interpreting of visions I know nothing, but it might be that way."
The Banjara now departed, and Swinton said: "Do you remember Prince Ananda saying that if a holy man stood by the Lake of the Golden Coin in the full of the moon, when the mhowa was in bloom, having the three sacred sapphires, he would see the dead king rise in his golden boat?"
"Yes, and this cowherd's chatter means an uprising soon. I hear hoofs; that will be Lord Victor. Are we going to accuse him of being at the pool?"
"I think not. We know as much now as we shall if we question him. But we'll keep him with us; a young ass like that isn't safe without a keeper – he's no match for as clever a traitor as this girl."
Finnerty's chair groaned as though it had received a twist from his big frame, but his voice was devoid of protest: "I can't make the girl out. My mind is in a psychological state, and I suppose I'm influenced by the apparent candour in her eyes. They seem to express trouble, too, as if she were searching for a moral finger post, for a way out of darkness." Then the major expressed an apologetic phrase: "I'm afraid I'm a bit awkward at psychology; jungle dwellers are more in my line."
Swinton put his hand on the big man's shoulder. "My dear major, I wish I'd had a brother like you. My family was baked in the crucible of government service for generations; we're executive automatons."
"I understand; you're an Englishman – Damn it! I mean, in youth you never roamed the hills like shaggy-haired colts as we do in Ireland."
"If I had I wouldn't have made a good Raj policeman. But to hark back. The German machine, more soulless than our own, knows the value of Mona Lisa eyes, and Marie was probably picked for this delicate mission for the very quality that has won your sympathy – her appealing womanhood."
"And yet my perhaps sympathy for the girl was birthed by accident, not design on her part."
"What is an attractive girl doing here so close to Prince Ananda? Why is she here with a Prussian who is an enemy of the British Raj? Why is she averse to being approached? What is she searching for in the hills? It's the road to China, and guns have already arrived, according to our Banjara."
"I haven't an answer for any one of your queries, captain, but we must investigate those packets."
Lord Victor arrived now, and as he had not yet seen the skin of Pundit Bagh he was taken to where it was pegged out on the ground and being rubbed with ashes and alum. This kill of a tiger was probably the first incident in his life calculated to raise elation in the hearts of his friends.
"Something to tack to, eh?" he cried joyfully. "Fancy I hear the chaps in fluffy old London saying as I pass, 'That's the man that shot a big man-eater on foot.' No swank to that, major, for I did. You know that dicky little chapel dedicated to the tiger god?"
"Yes; the one down in the plain."
"It's simply buried under devotee bric-a-brac this morning. They should have a sign up 'Wet Paint,' for it's gory blood red. When I came along a fat black man, rolled in white muslin, cursed me – absolutely bowled at my wicket with a ball of brimstone. Now what do you make of that, major? It wasn't about the cow dog, for the bounder had one English word, 'tiger,' which he simply sprayed his lingo with."
