of the big star-apple tree upon the little grass plot, where he sat
in a cushioned bamboo chair beside the clump of waving cannas, Nora
came upon him suddenly, as if by accident, from the Italian terrace,
with a bunch of beautiful pale-blue plumbago and a tall spike of
scented tuberose in her dainty, gloveless, little fingers. ‘Aren’t
they beautiful, Mr Noel?’ she said, holding them up to his admiring
gaze—admiring them, it must be confessed, a trifle obliquely. ‘Did you
ever in your life see anything so wildly lovely in a stiff, tied-up,
staircase conservatory over yonder in dear old England?’
‘Never,’ Harry Noel answered, with his eyes fixed rather on her
blushing face than on the luscious pale white tuberose. ‘I shall carry
away with me always the most delightful reminiscences of beautiful
Trinidad and of its lovely—flowers.’
Nora noticed at once the significant little pause before the last word,
and blushed again, even deeper than ever. ‘Carry away with you?’ she
said regretfully, echoing his words—‘carry away with you? Then do you
mean to leave the island immediately?’
‘Yes, Miss Dupuy—immediately; by the next steamer. I’ve written off
this very morning to the agents at the harbour to engage my passage.’
Nora’s heart beat violently within her. ‘So soon!’ she said. ‘How very
curious! And how very fortunate, too, for I believe papa has taken
berths for himself and me by the very same steamer. He’s gone to-day to
call on the governor; and when he comes back, he’s going to decide at
once whether or not we are to leave the island immediately for ever.’
‘Very fortunate? You said very fortunate? How very kind of you. Then
you’re not altogether sorry, Miss Dupuy, that we’re going to be
fellow-passengers together?’
‘Mr Noel, Mr Noel! How can you doubt it?’
Harry’s heart beat that moment almost as fast as Nora’s own. In spite
of his good resolutions—which he had made so very firmly too—he
couldn’t help ejaculating fervently: ‘Then you forgive me, Miss Dupuy!
You let bygones be bygones! You’re not angry with me any longer!’
‘Angry with you, Mr Noel—angry with you! You were so kind, you were so
brave! how could I ever again be angry with you!’
Harry’s face fell somewhat. After all, then, it was only gratitude.
‘It’s very good of you to say so,’ he faltered out tremulously—‘very
good of you to say so. I—I—I shall always remember—my—my visit to
Orange Grove with the greatest pleasure.’
‘And so shall I,’ Nora added in a low voice, hardly breathing; and as
she spoke, the tears filled her eyes to overflowing.
Harry looked at her once more tenderly. How beautiful and fresh she
was, really! He looked at her, and longed just once to kiss her. Nora’s
hand lay close to his. He put out his own fingers, very tentatively,
and just touched it, almost as if by accident. Nora drew it half away,
but not suddenly. He touched it again, a little more boldly this time,
and Nora permitted him, unreproving. Then he looked hard into her
averted tearful eyes, and said tenderly the one word, ‘Nora!’
Nora’s hand responded faintly by a slight pressure, but she answered
nothing.
‘Nora,’ the young man cried again, with sudden energy, ‘if it is love,
take me, take me. But if it is only—only the recollection of that
terrible night, let me go, let me go, for ever!’
Nora held his hand fast in hers with a tremulous grasp, and whispered
in his ear, almost inaudibly: ‘Mr Noel, it is love—it is love! I love
you—indeed I love you!’
When Macfarlane came his rounds that evening to see his patients he
declared that Harry Noel’s pulse was decidedly feverish, and that he
must have been somehow over-exciting himself; so he ordered him back
again ruthlessly to bed at once till further notice.
A LEOPARD HUNT.
It was my good fortune, a great many years ago, to be cantoned at
Julbarri. I say ‘good fortune,’ for so I considered it; but I am
afraid, if you had asked at our mess for votes as to whether I ought
to qualify the word fortune with the adjective ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ I
should have got very few to vote for my word. Good fortune I considered
it, nevertheless; for I was an ardent sportsman; Julbarri was almost
untried ground; and the neighbouring jungles abounded in game of many
kinds, among which the rhinoceros, the tiger, and the leopard were by
no means few and far between. And yet I cannot deny that for any one
who was not a sportsman, Julbarri was about as slow a station as could
be picked out in all the length and breadth of our vast Indian empire.
It was situated in an out-of-the-way corner of Bengal; and there was no
large station within a couple of hundred miles of us where a man with
social and gregarious tastes could go for a few days to get rid of the
oft-told tales and well thrashed-out politics of the limited circle
of our small mess-table. Julbarri was, alas, a single-corps station;
and except a Civil officer or two, the whole society consisted of the
gallant British officers of the distinguished 76th Native Infantry; a
nice set of fellows enough, I allow; but still the best of listeners
must in time grow inattentive to Smith’s ideas on the comparative
merits of Arab and English horses; and it is difficult to wage any
real warfare with Jones as he challenges you for the hundredth time to
defend Lord Gough’s tactics at Chilianwalla.
At the time of which I write, our society was at a peculiarly low
ebb. The drill season was over; the hot weather was coming on; and
the leave season had begun. There was so little work to be done, that
our colonel had taken pity on our isolation, and had been unusually,
perhaps almost unauthorisedly, liberal in the matter of leave; and
our mess, small enough at its best, had dwindled and dwindled, until
now not more than half-a-dozen unfortunates daily stretched their legs
beneath its well-spread mahogany. For me, the approaching heat had no
terrors, the smallness of our society no ennui, and the prospect of
escape from Julbarri no charms; for the beginning of the hot weather
is the very time when the best shooting can be obtained, and I had
long been watching the drying up of the grass in the jungles, and had
been looking forward to the time when we might start a tiger with
some chance of bagging him. There was one thing in which we were
particularly fortunate: we had attached to our regiment nine elephants
as a part of our regimental transport. I need scarcely say that it
was not long before we had the elephants and their mahouts (drivers)
thoroughly trained for shooting. The largest elephants we trained to
carry our howdahs, and the smaller we used to form a line to beat the
jungles and drive out the game. With these elephants we had lots of
fun, and there were few weeks after the shooting season began in which
some of us did not go out two or three times. We generally took it in
turns; four of us went out, and two remained behind to look after the
regiment and the station.
We kept three or four shikarees (native hunters), who were constantly
going about the villages and jungles within a radius of six or seven
miles of cantonments; and as soon as they heard of a tiger having
killed a bullock or any other animal, or as soon as they discovered the
fresh footmarks of any animal worth going after, they would come in and
give the _khubber_ (news); and then those whose turn it was would send
the elephants and their arms on towards where the game had been seen,
and would follow themselves on horseback as quickly as possible. The
best kind of _khubber_ was when a bullock or any other large animal
had been killed. The tiger usually prowls round some village or some
place where cattle is pastured and kept for the night; and when he sees
his opportunity, will spring on some unfortunate animal which has got
separated from the rest of the herd, or has remained out too late in
the jungle, heedless of the herdsman’s call home, will kill it with a
blow of his paw, and drag it into some neighbouring jungle thicker and
denser than that immediately around the village.
Nothing shows more the marvellous strength possessed by the tiger than
the way in which he carries his victim away. I remember the first time
I was shown where a tiger had dragged a full-grown bullock. I could
not believe it possible; and it was not until after we had killed the
robber—only an ordinary-sized tigress—and I had carefully gone over
on foot the ground where she had dragged her prey, that I found that
she had not only dragged the dead bullock—an animal, I should think,
considerably beyond her own weight—over very rough ground and through
a dense cane-brake; but that in some places, as the marks showed, she
must actually have lifted the fore-quarters of the bullock off the
ground in her mouth, and have walked several yards with it in that
position. When the victim has been dragged to what the tiger considers
a position of security, it will sit down and make a good meal, and
then retire a short distance from its prey to some particularly thick
bush or tuft of grass, and there remain until the following night, and
then return for another meal. In consequence of this well-known habit,
‘a kill,’ as it is called, is the best of all _khubber_, and in such
cases, if the tiger has not been disturbed, the sportsman is almost
sure to find him lying somewhere close to the carcase; and if his
arrangements are well made, is pretty sure to get a shot at him.
Our shikarees, stimulated by liberal backsheesh when their news
resulted in a bag, used often to bring us in _khubber_; but sometimes
the news was not very good; and when this was the case, the less
ardent sportsmen of our number would frequently refuse to go out, and
would make over their turn to me. I never refused, for I was young and
enthusiastic enough to love the fun and the excitement of the hunt,
even when our expedition resulted in no bag; and did not care for the
chaff with which my sedater comrades would greet me on my return.
Sometimes, however, the laugh was on my side; but I was wise enough,
with a view to future contingencies, not to indulge in it too much.
We had been having very fair sport on and off for about six weeks, and
the animals in the jungles close around the station seemed to have
been all killed off or driven away; for a whole week passed, and no
_khubber_ good enough to tempt even me did our shikarees bring. It
was the seventh blank day, and as we sat at our _chota hazri_ (early
morning cup of some invigorating but harmless beverage), under the
shade of a splendid mango-tree which grew conveniently close to our
messhouse veranda, my chum and I were discussing the necessity of
taking a week’s trip across the river which skirted our station, and
were trying to cajole our companions into letting us have the use of
the elephants for so long a time. We had nearly succeeded in persuading
them of the uselessness of expecting to get any more shooting close
to Julbarri, and two of the least enthusiastic of our Nimrods had
actually given in, when into the compound and right up to our table who
should dash but Jamala, the very best and most trustworthy of all our
shikarees! Almost breathless, he stammered out: ‘Sahib, sahib, two such
huge tigers! Their pugs are as big as that;’ and he described with the
end of the stick he held in his hand a figure in the dust, intended to
portray the size of their footprints, which would have done credit to
a well-grown mammoth. ‘They have killed a bullock in the Kala jungle,
only six miles off; and I am sure they were still there when I left
half an hour ago. I ordered the elephants to be got ready as I passed
the lines.’
Here was news with a vengeance; but alas, it was my turn to stay in
cantonments; and with such splendid _khubber_ as this I could not, of
course, even hint the suggestion of an exchange. It was the custom of
those going out, to borrow all the firearms of those remaining behind;
so I and Castleton, who was my comrade in misfortune, made over our
Joe Manton guns and our Purdeys to our luckier companions, and wished
them good speed with the best grace we could muster; and if we betrayed
our feelings a little by throwing after them the parting exhortation,
‘Mind you don’t miss the fifteen-footer,’ well, I really think we ought
to be forgiven.
Castleton was a married man; and I must crave the ladies’ pardon for
omitting in my list of our Julbarri residents the really charming Mrs
Castleton and her fascinating sister, Miss Jervoise. As soon as the
hunters had gone, Castleton turned to me, and said: ‘You had better
come over and lunch with us, Watson. You’ll only be breaking your heart
over visions of those two fabulously footed tigers, if you lunch at
mess alone.’
I thanked him; and two o’clock found me receiving the commiserations
of the two fair ladies, while they pressed upon me the usual profuse
hospitality of an Indian luncheon. We had reached the dessert stage,
and Mrs Castleton was just pressing me to taste some specially
delicious plantains which a neighbouring rajah had sent her the
day before, when the bearer came in, and making a salaam, said to
Castleton: ‘A man has just come from that little hamlet of Goree; he
wants the sahib log to go out and shoot a leopard which has just killed
one of his kids, and is now lying eating it in a small patch of jungle.
Goree is only a mile and a half from here.’
We stared blankly at each other.
‘What can we do?’ said Castleton.
‘Do? Why, go and shoot it, of course!’ exclaimed the enthusiastic Miss
Jervoise.
‘But, Kate dear,’ broke in Mrs Castleton with wifely solicitude, ‘the
elephants are all away, and how can they shoot it?’
‘Oh, I am not thinking about the elephants,’ replied Castleton; ‘but
Watson and I have lent all our rifles and guns, and we haven’t a single
thing of any kind left.’
‘There are the sepoys’ rifles,’ I suggested. ‘We could take one of them
apiece; and, you know, we can’t let the leopard get off without having
a try for him. Can we?’
‘Yes, there are the sepoys’ rifles, certainly,’ replied Castleton
rather doubtfully; ‘but’——
‘And I have got a couple of spears,’ I interrupted. ‘Oh, do let us go
at once, before he is disturbed.’
‘Well—all right; we’ll try it,’ said Castleton hesitatingly.
I lost no time in running home and changing into a shooting costume.
Castleton sent his orderly off to the lines for our weapons; and by
the time I had returned with the spears, the orderly reappeared with
a couple of rifles and a packet of cartridges. So, a very short time
saw us mounted on our horses and following our guide out to the little
village of Goree.
‘I am not very sure about the wisdom of this business,’ said Castleton.
‘Oh, it will be all right,’ I replied. ‘We must be careful not to fire
until we are pretty sure to kill—that’s all.’
‘Hm, yes, I suppose so,’ assented my comrade somewhat doubtfully.
As a matter of fact, it was not an overwise business. Our regiment
was armed in those days with the short two-grooved Brunswick rifle,
a muzzle loader, of course, and one in which the bullet had to be
hammered into the muzzle with a small wooden hammer carried for the
purpose, before it could be rammed down with the ramrod. This rendered
the process of loading so dreadfully slow that practically it would
make it quite impossible for either of us to get more than one shot,
and it is no easy matter to kill a leopard with one bullet, however
well placed. If he were not killed, he would be pretty certain to
charge, and we should be in an awkward plight.
Matters did not look much more encouraging when we reached Goree. The
_khubber_ was good enough: there was the place where the kid had been
struck, and there were the drops of blood and footprints of a large
leopard leading into a patch of dense cane-jungle about one hundred
yards long and sixty yards broad, and we had very little doubt that
he was in there, sure enough. We arranged, somewhat rashly, that we
would enter the jungle from nearly opposite ends of the patch and
work towards the centre. If either of us saw the leopard, we were,
if possible, first to whistle and then to call out before shooting.
We did this with a double object—first, that we might not shoot each
other; and secondly, that if one of us wounded the beast and he came
towards the other, we might be on the lookout for him, and not be
taken unawares. So we separated; and I cautiously entered the left end
of the patch, while Castleton made his entrance on the right. My end
of the jungle was thicker than Castleton’s; but the edge was fairly
clear, and by peering under the brake, I could see four or five yards
in front of me. Very soon, the cane and bushes became so dense that I
had to clear away the leaves with one hand while I held the rifle ready
cocked in the other. We had each a sepoy accompanying us and carrying
our second weapon, the spear. To my man I gave instructions that the
moment I fired, I would hand him back the rifle, and he was to give me
the spear. Of course I kept him behind me, so that he should be in no
danger. We had not begun our advance more than two or three minutes,
and had not penetrated, at our slow and cautious pace, more than about
twenty yards, when Castleton whistled. I at once stood still. After a
slight pause, he called out in a sort of stage whisper: ‘I see him; but
it’s a nasty shot. I can only see his hind-quarters, and there is a lot
of jungle in the way. Shall I shoot?’
‘Fire away,’ I replied, in an equally melodramatic tone, heartily
wishing that his chance had been mine. In about half a minute the
report of Castleton’s rifle rang out. It was followed by an angry
roar somewhere from my right front, and there was a dead silence. The
smoke from Castleton’s rifle came floating over my head; but though I
listened intently with my rifle half raised to my shoulder, not the
sound of a footstep or the cracking of a twig could I hear. At last
Castleton called out: ‘I’ve hit him, but not badly, I think; and he has
gone off in your direction.’
Giving Castleton time to reload, I again began moving forward with even
greater caution than before. I had advanced only a few paces, when on
pushing aside a screen of leaves thicker than usual, and thrusting my
head into a bush, I met a sight that made my heart jump: there, within
about six feet of me, crouched the leopard, his eyeballs glowing like
balls of green fire in the dark jungle, a look of the most savage
mischief on his face, and evidently just on the point of springing
straight at me. My first impulse was to throw my rifle to my shoulder
and fire at once; but more quickly than a flash of lightning came the
conviction, like a living voice speaking in me: ‘If you do, and if you
don’t kill him dead, he’ll kill you.’ My nerves seemed to grow steady
at once, and I checked my first rash impulse. Then keeping my eye fixed
on his, I raised my rifle slowly and deliberately, took a steady aim,
and fired. A dull groan and a desperate convulsion followed, and then
in half a minute all was still. My faithful sepoy had duly obeyed my
instructions; he had taken my rifle and had given me the spear, and
with this spear held at the charge, ready to receive the leopard if he
came my way, we waited until the convulsion subsided. Then peering in
again, we found that the leopard had gone back; and it was not until we
had advanced some ten yards that we came upon him lying dead. It shows
the marvellous vitality of the feline race; for though the ball was a
heavy one, and had crashed right through the brain, yet he had managed
to go fully eight yards from where he was crouching. Had the ball been
turned aside at all by a twig, or had it glanced off his skull, he
would almost certainly have made his spring, and in a jungle so dense I
could hardly have hoped to keep him off or defend myself.
I called up Castleton at once, and we soon pulled the leopard out of
the thicket. We found Castleton’s bullet had hit him in the side,
but far back, so as not to interfere in any way with his powers of
attack. I congratulated myself on a lucky escape. The villagers were
delighted at the death of a robber which had more than once laid their
flocks under contribution, and pressed their services on us to carry
him home. A procession was soon formed, and we returned to Julbarri
in triumph with the leopard swung on a pole in front of us. The other
hunters had not returned; so we had ample time to exhibit our prize to
the sympathetic eyes of Mrs Castleton and Miss Jervoise. In about an
hour, the others returned, wearied and disgusted. The tigers had been
disturbed before their arrival, and had betaken themselves to some
very heavy jungle, whence, in spite of their best efforts, they were
unable to dislodge them. It required a lot of good feeling on their
part to make them congratulate us as heartily as they did; and I hope
our sympathy with their ill-luck showed itself quite untinged with any
sense of our own better fortune.
A TALE OF TWO KNAVERIES.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAP. III.
In the course of the next three months, Mr Blackford’s relations with
his crazy client Willoughby entered upon a somewhat uncomfortable
phase. He had continued his heartless game with the poor wretch,
entertaining him with purely imaginative accounts of the superhuman
exertions which were being made on his behalf, and bleeding him with
a rapacity which grew with each successive extortion. He had in this
way obtained nearly a hundred pounds, when something happened which
he might have foreseen had he not been blinded by his greed, and which
caused him to entertain very unpleasant misgivings. Had Willoughby
been a sane man, pursuing a sane object, these repeated demands for
money, unaccompanied by any tangible performance, would have aroused
suspicions which would have manifested themselves in the usual manner.
But being as he was, his disease coloured everything which happened to
him; and the perfectly natural suspicions which arose in his mind made
themselves heard only by the mocking voices of his airy persecutors. So
one morning he informed Mr Blackford that the persons who followed him
wherever he went had adopted fresh tactics.
‘They have managed to find out what I come here for,’ said he, ‘and
they are trying to frighten me out of doing so in a very curious way.
In fact,’ he continued with an uneasy laugh, ‘they have taken to
slandering you as well.’
‘And what are they good enough to say about me?’ inquired the
solicitor, in much surprise.
‘Of course I pay no attention to it. I have every confidence in you; I
am sure you are doing the best you can for me—as you are, are you not?’
added the unfortunate client, with a look of pitiful appeal, which
would have softened the heart of any but a necessitous and perfectly
unprincipled man. As it was, Mr Blackford experienced an unpleasant
spasm in the place where his conscience used to be, before it had
dwindled away like an unused muscle.
‘Of course I am,’ he replied. ‘I hope you don’t doubt it?’
‘Oh, certainly not; on the contrary,’ returned Willoughby, with a
courteous bow. ‘But last night they mentioned your name in a most
unpleasant way. “He went to the wrong man when he went to Blackford.”
That was what one of them said. And another answered: “Yes, Blackford
is altogether on our side. He’ll spend all his money on Blackford,
and get no good whatever.” And they said—they said—— I can’t remember
everything; but it was all to the same effect. Of course that kind of
thing makes a man uneasy—naturally. Isn’t it disgraceful that the law
can do nothing to protect one from such persecution?’
Mr Blackford thought it best to laugh the matter off. ‘Well,’ said
he jocularly, ‘if we can but catch sight of them, I’ll soon disabuse
them of any such idea.—Don’t you pay any attention to their nonsense.
Of course they would like to put you off the scent. The rascals! I’d
give a good deal to get fairly at them. It won’t be long, now, before
I do so. We are well on their track; and once we have them before the
magistrate, we’ll pay them out for all the trouble they’ve given us.’
Willoughby rose to go. ‘I hope, as you say, that it will not be long
now,’ said he, with a doubtful and dissatisfied air. ‘You see, it is
wearing me out, and I have spent a good deal of money over it, besides.
One of them threatened to kill me last night. If anything of that kind
is to be attempted, they won’t find me an easy victim, Mr Blackford! I
shall try to be beforehand with them, at anyrate. I’m not a man to be
played with too long.’
And there was a look in the madman’s eyes as he spoke, and a kind
of quiver through his brawny muscles, which seemed to say that the
moment was fast approaching when playing with him would be a very risky
amusement indeed.