A mighty hunter, and his prey was man!-Pope.
It was the second evening and they
were nearing the ruined temple.
Walking silently and in single file
along a faintly discernible track is an eerie proceeding
if you are not used to the Sunderbunds.
True, in this jungle there are no
serpent-like creepers festooned from tree to tree
to impede your progress, or luxuriant and rank vegetation
to hide snakes and other poisonous reptiles; neither
is there a canopy of thick dark leaves above to obliterate
the light of day, or the stars at night.
But the space between the crowding
sundri trees which predominate, is packed with an
undergrowth of light shrubs through which you have
to force and tear your way if you lose the track;
and you trip and twist your ankle at every step on
the abominable sundri breathers which thrust themselves
through the soil at every inch, and vary in thickness
from a stick of vermicelli to a good stout bough.
“Look,” will whisper your
shikari as he sinks silently to the ground;
and look you do with all your eye-power, and yet fail
to see the spotted deer gazing at you, motionless
from sheer fright, only a few yards away in the undergrowth,
so at one is the animal’s colouring with the
dappled shadows on the leaves.
What depths of humiliation you plumb
when the deer flees to safety through the trees and
your shikari sighs.
Leonie as a gun had proved a dire, undiluted failure.
As a companion no one could beat her.
Nothing tired her, nothing dismayed her. The
terrific heat, the untoward hours and meals, the sting
of mosquito, and the rip of the thorn left her unmoved.
She and Edna Talbot had gleefully
climbed the ladder up to one of the two suapattah
huts, which are a kind of shelter of leaves built for
the sundri wood collector upon high platforms near
the water, and in which they had passed their first
vermin-stricken night. They had climbed cheerfully
down the next morning without a word of complaint
about the hours of torture they had endured as they
sat at the hut door in the light of the moon, whiling
away the time until the jungle cocks should crow by
watching various shapes come down to the creek to drink.
But the first time a deer, hypnotised
by fear or curiosity, had stood stock-still before
her, simply asking for death, Leonie put her gun down
and shook her head.
“I can’t,” she said
sturdily. “I simply could not kill
except in self-defence.”
And although young Dean sighed lugubriously
over his lady’s defalcation, Jan Cuxson adored
her utterly for her womanliness, and translated the
remark the head shikari made as he handed back
to the mem-sahib the rifle he had examined.
“He says he knows that in time
of need you would be brave, and would have no fear
even of a man-eater, but he says that you must
carry your rifle because you can never tell in the
jungle what may be awaiting you round the next corner.”
As none of the party knew that the
temple stood well hidden but quite close to the edge
of one of the smallest creeks, open only to the narrowest
native craft, they had no idea they were being taken
there by a most circuitous route; and the shikari
who did know thought that the silent guide was doing
it purposely in order to give the sahibs an opportunity
to add yet more to the ever-increasing bag of odds-and-ends,
also to his backsheesch later on.
They were all longing to get to the
ruins; more than desirous for their evening meal;
aching to remove their boots, and the dust, and other
evidence of a hard day’s tramp.
“We are almost there, mem-sahib,”
said the very fine old shikari who, by the
way, is a real personage, as he noticed a certain lack
of elasticity in Leonie’s movements. “Let
us hasten, because at the fall of the shadows, all
that is evil will come down to the waters, and behold!
as this jungle is cut across and yet across with water-ways,
the evil ones may even cross the sahibs’ path.”
“How much farther is it?”
“Another half-mile of this path,
sahib, then through a glade without trees, then another
mile and we find the outer wall of the temple.”
The perfect English came from a small
knot of natives difficult to distinguish in the shadows.
Leonie swung round and stared, and
turning to Jan Cuxson put her hand on his arm.
“Funny, isn’t it?”
she said softly. “But do you know I am
sure I have heard that voice before, and all this”-and
she waved a hand vaguely-“seems so
very, very familiar.”
The head-man halted them once more
at the edge of the clearing.
Strange bare spots these clearings
which occur now and again in the Sunderbunds, looking
for all the world as though they had been cleared
by man some time or another for building purposes.
Well, who knows if that doughty adventurer, Khan
Jehan, did not prospect thereabouts centuries back.
“We will now place the mem-sahibs
in the centre of a widening circle,” said the
shikari patiently, showing no sign of the detestation
in which he held all sports-women, and the amount
of trouble and anxiety their presence always entailed
in a shikar, however insignificant.
To lose a sahib would be bad enough,
but to see a mem-sahib seized and carried off before
your very eyes, well, by the power of all the gods,
that would mean ruin if not death; for, being a very
wise old man, however good the news, he always prepared
for the worst.
“I dislike these clearings at
the setting of the sun, O defender of the poor!”
he explained to the major, who kept his wife close
and was beginning to wish he had not brought her,
even if she were far and away the better shot of the
two. “The trouble is upon one without even
the warning of a cracking twig. Neither have
I any love for the temple, for behold! one, even a
great guru up to within a few moons of this
day, lived there in worship, making sacrifice to the
Black One. Yet is he not there to welcome us.
Maybe he has fallen victim to the bhoot of
the great cat whom he once fed.”
Luckily for their peace of mind the
sahib log only understood a quarter of a man’s
lament, and did not trouble their heads about ghosts.
“Aye, verily am I bewitched
to allow of such tarrying, likewise to let such fear
enter my head,” he muttered to himself, and as
a cloak to his misgivings sharply ordered ten men
to proceed to the centre of the clearing in a semi-circle,
and there await further orders.
They did as they were ordered, and
were standing motionless when suddenly without a sound
a great striped body leapt straight from the shadows
of the surrounding trees upon a boy who had out-distanced
his companions.
The instant double report of Jan Cuxson’s
rifle deadened the lad’s horrible screaming
and the growling of the wounded beast as it crouched
flat, almost hidden behind the human body in the undergrowth,
with tail lashing, and great claws tearing the boy’s
shoulder, as the rest of the terrified coolies ran
shouting back to the party.
“Fire, sahib,” commanded the shikari.
“Can’t,” tersely
replied Major Talbot. “I shall kill the
boy if I do; the brute’s making a shield of
his body. I’ll creep round to the flank
and-
“Fire, sahib,” urged the
native. “Better to kill the lad as he is
badly wounded,” then added, “Tesch,”
as Talbot shook his head. “Stay here,
sahib, to protect the mem-sahibs, I will creep to-
“God!”
The word simultaneously escaped the
three men as they and Edna Talbot raised their rifles.
Leonie was walking across the space,
neither hastening nor hesitating, towards the tiger
which crouched, growling softly, with its tail sweeping
the ground.
Did she hypnotise the brute, or did
her supreme courage build an invisible barrier between
the two?
Who knows!
Anyway she calmly approached within
five yards, raised her rifle, took deliberate aim,
and fired just as, with a hoarse-coughing roar, the
tiger sprang.
There was the dull thud of a bullet,
a snarl, and the animal fell back across the boy’s
body, twitching convulsively.
Without one moment’s hesitation,
while the rest of the party stood helpless owing to
her position, Leonie, letting fall her rifle and drawing
her revolver, walked right up to the writhing brute
and fired straight into the terrible mouth.
With one supreme effort the tiger
reared itself on its hind legs, gave a choking, strangled
cough ending in a spurt of blood and froth which drenched
Leonie, and fell back dead; and the entire native staff,
shouting in wonder and joy, tore across the clearing
and prostrated themselves, in grateful layers around
the girl’s heavily booted feet.