THE JUNGLE

The sun beat fiercely down on the bed of the river, now dry save for streamlets meandering among the boulders, and encircling patches of sand that were dotted with birds of the long-shanked, long-billed brotherhood. It seemed hard to believe that a few weeks hence this arid, stone-strewn area would be swept by a mighty, tempestuous flood, rushing down from the hills in a volume so vast that nothing could stem its advance. Now the boulders shone round and smooth, and blinding white in the midday heat. They might have been cannon balls hurled by some Titan race in the ages past from the amphitheatre of hills at some foe in the valley beneath. The islets of sand sparkled like gold; indeed, gold dust was known to be mixed with their grains, though as yet whence it came was a secret no man had discovered; at least, if he had, the secret was kept by enchantment. There were stories of venturesome pilgrims, returning from far-away shrines in the mountains, found dead by the road that led back to the world, with nuggets of gold on their persons; no one had lived to return to the spot where he found them.

The straggling line of elephants, lurching in leisurely progress across the bed of the river, showed like black blots among the boulders. The animals felt their footing with careful precision, splashing through narrow streams, avoiding the stretches of sand that might prove to be death-traps for ponderous beasts, tearing up wisps of scrub with their trunks and beating them free of dust before putting them into their mouths, or flinging them far in disdain.

Captain Coventry's elephant brought up the rear of the little procession. He sat idly back in his howdah, his guns and his rifles stacked before him. His thoughts had wandered from river-beds, elephants, "kills," and tigers; for the tents of the camp, gleaming white in a grove of trees on the opposite bank, had attracted his eye, and he was hoping to find a letter from Trixie awaiting him there. His face was burnt by the sun to the hue of a brick, he looked lean and hard and in fine condition. The fortnight in camp had been all to his taste--congenial companions, capital sport, the arrangements as perfect as only a hunter such as his host could have made them.

This morning the camp had moved, therefore sport on the march had been varied. Two pad elephants carried the game--spotted deer, jungle fowl, partridge, a wild boar with tushes like ivory sickles, and, chief of all, a magnificent panther, shot by Coventry as it lay stretched along the branch of a tree, watching with wicked green eyes the party of sportsmen filing beneath.

Coventry's leave was nearing its close. In a couple of days he was due to return to the station, and he sometimes surprised himself counting the hours. But he did not intend to desert "the shoot" before the appointed time, especially since the object in moving the camp to-day was to get within reach of a man-eating tiger whose terrible doings had scared all the people for miles around. The inhabitants of the little jungle villages were almost paralysed with fear, their crops were neglected, they dared not take out their cattle to graze; the brute was as active by day as by night, and had even been known to come into a hut and drag out his victim. From all accounts he was not of the usual mangy type that, enfeebled by age, finds man a much easier prey than the deer or the buffalo; he was described by the people as a creature of monstrous proportions, in the prime of life, and possessed with a spirit that was without doubt of the devil, since he slew beasts for caprice or amusement, and human beings for food. Many were "the sahibs" who had sought to destroy him, on foot, from howdahs, from seats in the trees; in vain had bullocks and goats and buffalo calves been tied up as bait; even the ghastly remains of his meals had been watched. Yet still he went free, the "slayer," the "striped one," the "lord of the jungle." (No villager mentions the tiger by name, for fear of ill-luck.)

As the sportsmen arrived in their camp they were met by a terrified group, a deputation of wretched, half-naked people who had come from a hamlet near by to report yet another disaster. They waited while the sahibs got down from the elephants and stretched their cramped limbs, and then they approached with humble yet eager appeal.

"Highness, protector of the poor, father and mother, we are humble folk," wailed the spokesman, prostrating himself at their feet, a mummified object with rags round his head and his loins. "Thy slaves do entreat thee to slay the 'shaitan' that stalketh by day and by night. No one is safe. Only last night did the evil one fall on the wife of my nephew as she went forth to draw water from the well. In front of our eyes did he spring out and seize her and carry her off in his jaws; and when her husband ran in pursuit, like a fool, with curses and cries, did the evil one pause and look back. And he threw down the woman and smote the man also, then bore the woman away to the jungle. If it should be the sahibs' pleasure to know that this dust speaks but truth, will we guide the huzoors to the spot where my nephew lies hurt unto death in the village. Maybe he is dead by now."

Again the deputation salaamed, as one man, to the ground, then stood gazing at the sahibs in hopeful anticipation.

"We'd better go and see if there's anything to be done for the wretched beggar," suggested Markham; "and if the tiger should be about and come for us, so much the better; we'll polish him off."

All four "sahibs" were hot and hungry and thirsty. Coventry was hungry for his letters, as well as for his breakfast. But without further delay they followed the squalid, excited little band in single file along a jungle track, their rifles under their arms. They passed through a sea of feathery grass that grew high above their heads, and on among dense bamboo thickets and tangled scrub. They were close to the edge of the forest, and the rustle of the tree-tops in the fierce west wind was unceasing. Their boots sank deep into hot, dry dust; sometimes startled animals darted across the track almost between their feet--little hog deer, squirrels, hares, jackals that slunk noiselessly into the grass. The harsh calling of pea-fowl, the chatter of monkeys, the screams of green parrots resounded above them. The heat was like that of a furnace; it was a blessed relief to emerge from the close-bound path on to a clearing in front of the village. It was a pathetic little patch of habitation, the people members of a jungle tribe not far removed from aborigines; just a cluster of mud-built dwellings thatched with grass, a shallow tank covered with green slime, in which pigs and buffaloes wallowed; refuse was scattered about, and on a rudely constructed platform under the usual peepal tree a few aged human beings, wasted with fever and poverty, sat huddled together; naked children with swollen stomachs played at their feet, and mangy pariah dogs met the arrivals with furious barking. It was just such a place as a man-eating tiger could persecute at his pleasure.

Coventry never forgot the sickening scene that followed. He and his friends were conducted with noisy ceremony into a hut that already seemed crowded with people; women were wailing, the smell and the heat and the dimness of the interior were stifling in their effect, and on a low string bedstead lay a twisted form partially covered with rags. The patriarch who had led the deputation to the camp stepped forward full of importance.

"Behold, sahibs, this is the doing of the destroyer!"

To the horror of the Englishmen, before they could check him, he lifted the mask of the unfortunate victim by the nose, and held it poised in the air for a moment before he replaced it. Mercifully the man was dead, only just dead, however; he had lived through the night and into the day with the whole of his face, from the scalp to the chin, torn away by the tiger.

"What extraordinary beggars these jungle people seem to be! I believe that old brute this morning would have lifted off that poor devil's face just the same if we'd got there while he was alive; in fact, I don't think he knew he was dead." The speaker, one of the shooting party, was a young man fresh to India, and this his first experience of the jungle had been full, for him, of excitement and wonder.

"Probably not," said Markham; "the callousness of the Oriental does strike one as pretty brutal sometimes, but it's just an acceptance of misfortune ingrained in them by their religion. In their own way they are charitable and kind-hearted, and they are often brave to rashness. When you come to think what that village has endured, you'd imagine there'd be hardly a sane inhabitant left."

The murmur of voices reached Coventry's brain as from a distance, though the two who were talking were only a few paces from him. He lay half asleep on a long camp chair in the shade, Trixie's letters clasped in his hand--a three days' budget brought out by runners from the nearest point of postal communication. Trixie was well, she had written, but she missed him, the time had seemed long, she was glad it was nearly over. Holding her letters he dreamed, as he dozed, of their meeting, while the murmur of voices went on.... Then as he stirred he caught snatches of talk through his dreams, now distinct, now connected, as drowsiness lifted.

The boy was saying: "You must have seen some curious things in your time, I suppose, sir?" He spoke with the awe and respect of youth for age and experience, as though Markham might be a hundred years old at the least.

Coventry listened, amused, and kept his eyes closed. He knew that if Markham chose, he could tell some odd stories. He lay quiet and listened.

"Well, yes, I suppose I have," Markham said musingly; and Coventry heard him knocking his pipe on his chair before he refilled it. The words and the sound were hopeful. Coventry lay quiet and listened.

"Is there any truth in the tales about children being carried away, and brought up by wolves in the jungle?"

"Undoubtedly. I once saw one myself; in fact, I'm sorry to say I shot the poor creature."

The boy gasped. Markham went on:

"We were out at the foot of the hills after bear, and coming back to camp one evening something jumped out of the long grass and I fired. You see, I don't often miss, and the thing was dead when we picked it up. It wasn't a monkey, as we thought at first; it was a wild man, covered with hair, and evidently it had always gone on its hands and knees."

"And what did you do?" came the breathless question.

"Buried it," said Markham briefly, "and said nothing about it."

"Oh, do go on!" urged the boy, enthralled.

Markham laughed. "Let me think," he said indulgently. "Well, last year I went up towards the head of the Ganges to shoot crocodile with a fellow who thought he was going to make money over the skins--selling them for bags and cases, and so on--and one morning a villager came to the camp and asked us to shoot the 'mugger' that had swallowed his wife the day before. He was a washerman, and he said he and the woman had just taken the clothes down to the edge of the river, and had begun to wash them, when a crocodile the size of a boat, as he described it, suddenly rose from the water and dragged his wife under. He declared the beast swallowed her whole then and there, and he seemed awfully put out because she was wearing the whole of her jewellery into which they had put all their savings--as the peasant people are in the habit of doing out here. He added that we should know her by that, and by her long hair. She had the longest hair, he informed us with pride, of any woman in the village. He didn't seem to understand that we might shoot dozens of crocodiles and never come across the one that had swallowed his wife; he kept saying we couldn't mistake it because it was the biggest crocodile that had ever been seen or heard of, and he went away perfectly confident that he would get the jewellery back. Oddly enough next day we did see a monster, and managed to bag him, and when we cut him open there was the wretched woman in his inside--jewellery, and long hair, and all! The whole village turned out and salaamed to us as if we had been gods, and they became such a nuisance we had to move on."

"Hullo, Markham! Yarning?" Another member of the shoot came out of his tent fresh from a snooze, and flung himself into an empty chair. "What is it? Ghosts, or tigers, or murders, or witchcraft?"

"It's your turn now," said Markham good-temperedly; "tell him the most hair-raising tale you can think of, and give me a rest. As a policeman you ought to know plenty."

"Plenty," replied the policeman, and yawned. "But I can't remember any just now. It's too hot, and I'm too sleepy."

"But you must come across such interesting things in the bazaars!" said the boy, in a pleading voice. His ambition had been to write, to become an author, to follow in the footsteps of Stevenson, Kipling, and other great masters of romance; but his people, being practical, had scolded and pushed him into the Indian Public Works, and he had no time to use his pen for anything but estimates, reports, and office work, which bored his imaginative soul.

"I did come across an odd little echo of the past only the other day," the policeman admitted with an effort. "I had breakfast one morning with some missionaries in an out-of-the-way corner of my district, and I noticed an old Englishwoman wandering about the compound with an ayah in attendance. She was dressed in grey, with a poke bonnet and full skirts, like the pictures in old Punches. They told me she had been found at the time of the Mutiny as a young girl of about fifteen hiding in the jungle wearing native clothes. Nobody knew who she was, and the poor thing couldn't tell them because she was out of her mind, and she had never recovered her reason. She had been handed on to these people by the missionaries they succeeded, and by others before them--and there she had been living for over fifty years, perfectly harmless, costing very little, and only insisting on being dressed in grey and in the fashion of the Mutiny time. If they tried to put her into anything else she only cried and protested pitifully, so they just went on copying the garments, and called her 'Miss Grey.' They can only suppose that her people were killed in the outbreak, and that some faithful servant disguised her and hid her in the jungle, and that then she got lost and went out of her mind with terror."

"And no one will ever know who she was, or what really happened," said the boy, drawing a long breath. "Unless, perhaps, when she is dying it may all come back to her?" "It's to be hoped it won't," said the policeman, who was not a romanticist.

"It was lucky for 'Miss Grey' that she was found by friends," put in Markham. "By the way, do you remember that case a few years ago----"

Somnolence stole over Coventry's brain once more; the voices droned on and grew fainter, floating away into space; his head drooped again, and he found himself back in the station, not at all disconcerted because, with the curious inconsequence of dreams, his bungalow and the racquet court had in some marvellous manner been merged into one. He was playing an excellent game, though the furniture got in the way and Trixie kept trying to stop him. She was saying: "George, do come away--think of the woman in the bazaar"; and a crowd of men standing by shouted in chorus: "Yes, remember, old chap, the woman in the bazaar." Then he fell over a chair in the act of making a wonderful stroke, and as, with a jerk, he awoke, he heard Markham repeating--"woman in the bazaar."

"What on earth are you gassing about?" he said crossly. His head ached, and he felt hot and sticky, in spite of his recent tub.

"The case of that woman whose husband did something he shouldn't connected with money, and got put into prison, and she drifted into one of the big bazaars----"

"What, an Englishwoman?"

"Yes, worse luck. It was some years ago--while you were at home, I suppose; but there was a tremendous fuss made about it at the time, and I believe the Government tried to interfere and to pay her way home, but didn't succeed----"

"That sort of thing isn't so uncommon as you'd think," observed the policeman significantly. "Our service comes up against queer things in that direction."

"Oh, do for Heaven's sake shut up!" exclaimed Coventry, with the captiousness of the newly awakened. "We've had quite enough horrors to last us for one day, at least, what with that business in the village this morning, and now all your infernal reminiscences."

The cause of his dream became clear to him now. While he dozed the conversation around him had recalled to his subconscious mind the unsavoury rumour he had heard in the racquet court one evening--the evening on which, subsequently, he had felt so annoyed with his wife and with young Greaves for staying out late.

"We thought you were asleep," said Markham in a tone of provoking apology. "So I was, and you woke me up with your jabber."

"It's time you were awake," Markham said, rising. "We ought to be off pretty soon to the machans."

With the courage and skill of his tribe, the shikari had tracked the tiger, and discovered the spot where the mangled remains of the woman lay hidden beneath the bush. This was not far from the village, and during the day the tracker had fashioned machans, or rough seats, in the trees for the sahibs, and had tied up a buffalo calf near by as additional bait. In an hour or two the tiger might be on the prowl and return to his hideous meal, though a man-eater's movements are always uncertain--one day, or one night, he may pounce on his prey, and be heard of again next morning five or six miles away; unlike his kindred of more conventional habits, who will kill about every three days, and return as a rule to the carcase two or three times.

It was a long and wearisome wait, sitting cramped and motionless in the trees. Tigers will seldom look up, but the very least noise--a whisper, a movement, a creak of a seat, or the crack of a twig--is sufficient to warn them, and, once suspicious, nothing will tempt them to come within range; they will slink off in silence and slay elsewhere. Coventry and the boy were perched on one platform, their backs against the trunk; lots had been drawn for the seats, and they had been lucky. Their place was just over the bait that was living, and they could see a twisted brown object protruding from under the bush where the tiger had hidden his victim--an arm of the corpse, as the blue glass bangles that still encircled the poor little wrist betokened.

The sun began to go down, flooding the scene with a rose-coloured radiance, and the moon was not due to rise until late. The air was close and the jungle intensely still, save for the humming of countless insects, and sometimes the cry of a peacock, piercing and harsh, in the distance. As the light softened and faded a rustling in the grass told of porcupines that had come out to feed; they seemed, as the boy said afterwards, to be running about like rabbits. Suddenly a shabby little jackal emerged from the undergrowth, noiselessly, with caution; for a moment he stood still and snuffed the air, then he whisked his brush and gave a wild, unearthly yell, repeating it at intervals, and danced and capered in such fantastic fashion that the boy shook with suppressed amusement.

But Coventry stiffened his muscles. He remembered the native belief that some jackals are "pheaows," or providers, by trade, and are supposed to precede the tiger and utter weird cries either to warn him of danger or to announce some find of food. Whether such a belief was based on truth, or whether such conduct was merely the outcome of fear, he knew that the "pheaow's" arrival, with yells and with antics, usually proclaimed the approach of a tiger, and that in all probability it did so now. With a final contortion and a last demoniacal cry the creature fled into covert, and silence again descended, broken only by queer little scuffling noises below and the twittering of owls in the trees. Then a troop of brown monkeys came crashing and chattering through the trees, throwing themselves from branch to branch in a state of the wildest excitement; and the buffalo calf, that had so far lain content on the ground, got up and showed symptoms of fear.

Coventry felt certain that the tiger was about, but except for the angry scoldings of the monkeys, and the nervous lowing of the calf, there was nothing to denote the close vicinity of any beast of prey. Time stole on and darkness fell. If the tiger chose to come between the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon there would be little hope of bagging him. The sportsmen had agreed that if he should delay they would wait until the moonlight gave a better chance, or even till the dawn. Nothing happened, though an intangible vibration in the air kept the human senses tightly strung through the interval of darkness that ensued. Now and then points of light moved over the ground like glow-worms--the eyes of small animals seeking their food.

Then the moon came up, full and serene, the colour of a ripe blood-orange, and threw her molten light upon the scene, till every blade and stick and leaf stood out, sharp and clear, against their own black shadows. The moments seemed interminable, every sound was magnified a hundredfold by the mysterious quiet--the soft fluttering of bats, the breathing of the buffalo calf, the furtive rustles in the grass. Coventry was stiff and tired, he felt half hypnotised; the light was so unnatural, a sort of weird enchantment held the jungle; if a band of sprites and goblins had appeared and danced wildly in a circle he would not have been surprised. He was near the borderland of dreams, and he tried to keep himself awake by thinking of the tiger, of Trixie, of his journey back to the station; but to his annoyance one sentence swung backwards and forwards, like a pendulum, through his brain to the exclusion of everything else: "The woman in the bazaar. The woman in the bazaar." He longed at last to cry it aloud, that he might free his mind from its spell. Why should these words have laid hold of his mind with such provoking persistence? He began to wonder if he had fever, if he had been "touched up" by the sun this morning; certainly his bones were aching and his head felt queer, but that might be due to the wearisome wait and the cramped position. He attempted to find his pulse, but he could not determine whether the beats were too fast, or too slow, or only just normal; and still the sentence clanged to and fro in his brain, "The woman in the bazaar. The woman in the bazaar."

Then above it his ears caught a tangible sound, though at first so stealthy, so faint, as to be almost inaudible. Again it came, this time a little more certain, a careful stir in the grass, a movement so soft and so wary, so light, that it might have been made by a snake. Afterwards silence, a silence charged with supreme suspense and excitement for the watchers alert in the trees; they hardly dared breathe. The buffalo calf strained at its tether, but uttered no sound, the poor little creature was dumb with fear.

Five minutes later something came out of the grass--a long, lithe form that looked grey in the moonlight, that wriggled along the ground with head held low and shoulders humped high; truly a very big tiger, though doubtless the rays of the moon enlarged its appearance unduly. Coventry was reminded of a cat stalking a bird as the beast made a noiseless run towards the buffalo calf and then paused, the muscles rippling under the skin from the large flat head, with ears laid back, to the tip of the tail, that quivered and jerked.

By the laws of sport it was Coventry's shot, for the tiger was nearest to his machan. He caught an agonised whisper of "Shoot, for God's sake!" from the boy, and he raised his rifle.

The weapon felt strangely top-heavy, it swayed in his hands, a mist seemed to rise between him and the sight, and as the report rang out he knew he had missed--missed badly. Almost at once there came other reports from the trees in sharp succession, and a roar of such fury and pain as shook the air, echoing far and near through the forest.

The man-eater's death was terrific. Over and over he rolled, gasping, roaring, biting the earth in his struggles, till with a hoarse, gurgling sigh he lay still, and his crimes were ended.