all the Maharajah's energies. 'You know, Miss Cayley,' he said to me, as
we stood upon the big stairs, looking down on the Hindoo city, 'a
tiger-hunt is not a thing to be got up lightly. Our people themselves
don't like killing a tiger. They reverence it too much. They're afraid
its spirit might haunt them afterwards and bring them bad luck. That's
one of our superstitions.'
'You do not share it yourself, then?' I asked.
He drew himself up and opened his palms, with a twinkling of pendant
emeralds. 'I am royal,' he answered, with naive dignity, 'and the tiger
is a royal beast. Kings know the ways of kings. If a king kills what is
kingly, it owes him no grudge for it. But if a common man or a low caste
man were to kill a tiger--who can say what might happen?'
I saw he was not himself quite free from the superstition.
'Our peasants,' he went on, fixing me with his great black eyes, 'won't
even mention the tiger by name, for fear of offending him: they believe
him to be the dwelling-place of a powerful spirit. If they wish to speak
of him, they say, "the great beast," or "my lord, the striped one." Some
think the spirit is immortal except at the hands of a king. But they
have no objection to see him destroyed by others. They will even point
out his whereabouts, and rejoice over his death; for it relieves the
village of a serious enemy, and they believe the spirit will only haunt
the huts of those who actually kill him.'
'Then you know where each tiger lives?' I asked.
'As well as your gamekeepers in England know which covert may be drawn
for foxes. Yes; 'tis a royal sport, and we keep it for Maharajahs. I
myself never hunt a tiger till some European visitor of distinction
comes to Moozuffernuggar, that I may show him good sport. This tiger we
shall hunt to-morrow, for example, he is a bad old hand. He has carried
off the buffaloes of my villagers over yonder for years and years, and
of late he has also become a man-eater. He once ate a whole family at a
meal--a man, his wife, and his three children. The people at Janwargurh
have been pestering me for weeks to come and shoot him; and each week he
has eaten somebody--a child or a woman; the last was yesterday--but I
waited till you came, because I thought it would be something to show
you that you would not be likely to see elsewhere.'
'And you let the poor people go on being eaten, that we might enjoy this
sport!' I cried.
He shrugged his shoulders, and opened his palms. 'They were villagers,
you know--ryots: mere tillers of the soil--poor naked peasants. I have
thousands of them to spare. If a tiger eats ten of them, they only say,
"It was written upon their foreheads." One woman more or less--who would
notice her at Moozuffernuggar?'
Then I perceived that the Maharajah was a gentleman, but still a
barbarian.
The eventful morning arrived at last, and we started, all agog, for the
jungle where the tiger was known to live. Elsie excused herself. She
remarked to me the night before, as I brushed her back hair for her,
that she had 'half a mind' not to go. 'My dear,' I answered, giving the
brush a good dash, 'for a higher mathematician, that phrase lacks
accuracy. If you were to say "seven-eighths of a mind" it would be
nearer the mark. In point of fact, if you ask my opinion, your
inclination to go is a vanishing quantity.'
She admitted the impeachment with an accusing blush. 'You're quite
right, Brownie; to tell you the truth, I'm afraid of it.'
'So am I, dear; horribly afraid. Between ourselves, I'm in a deadly funk
of it. But "the brave man is not he that feels no fear"; and I believe
the same principle applies almost equally to the brave woman. I mean
"that fear to subdue" as far as I am able. The Maharajah says I shall be
the first girl who has ever gone tiger-hunting. I'm frightened out of my
life. I never held a gun in my born days before. But, Elsie, recollect,
this is _splendid_ journalism! I intend to go through with it.'
'You offer yourself on the altar, Brownie.'
'I do, dear; I propose to die in the cause. I expect my proprietor to
carve on my tomb, "Sacred to the memory of the martyr of journalism. She
was killed, in the act of taking shorthand notes, by a Bengal tiger."'
We started at early dawn, a motley mixture. My short bicycling skirt did
beautifully for tiger-hunting. There was a vast company of native
swells, nawabs and ranas, in gorgeous costumes, whose precise names and
titles I do not pretend to remember; there were also Major Balmossie,
Lord Southminster, the Maharajah, and myself--all mounted on
gaily-caparisoned elephants. We had likewise, on foot, a miserable crowd
of wretched beaters, with dirty white loin-cloths. We were all very
brave, of course--demonstratively brave--and we talked a great deal at
the start about the exhilaration given by 'the spice of danger.' But it
somehow struck me that the poor beaters on foot had the majority of the
danger and extremely little of the exhilaration. Each of us great folk
was mounted on his own elephant, which carried a light basket-work
howdah in two compartments: the front one intended for the noble
sportsman, the back one for a servant with extra guns and ammunition. I
pretended to like it, but I fear I trembled visibly. Our mahouts sat on
the elephants' necks, each armed with a pointed goad, to whose
admonition the huge beasts answered like clock-work. A born journalist
always pretends to know everything before hand, so I speak carelessly of
the 'mahout,' as if he were a familiar acquaintance. But I don't mind
telling you aside, in confidence, that I had only just learnt the word
that morning.
The Maharajah protested at first against my taking part in the actual
hunt, but I think his protest was merely formal. In his heart of hearts
I believe he was proud that the first lady tiger-hunter should have
joined his party.
Dusty and shadeless, the road from Moozuffernuggar fares straight across
the plain towards the crumbling mountains. Behind, in the heat mist, the
castle and palace on their steeply-scarped crag, with the squalid town
that clustered at their feet, reminded me once more most strangely of
Edinburgh, where I used to spend my vacations from Girton. But the
pitiless sun differed greatly from the gray haar of the northern
metropolis. It warmed into intense white the little temples of the
wayside, and beat on our heads with tropical garishness.
I am bound to admit also that tiger-hunting is not quite all it is
cracked up to be. In my fancy I had pictured the gallant and
bloodthirsty beast rushing out upon us full pelt from some grass-grown
nullah at the first sniff of our presence, and fiercely attacking both
men and elephants. Instead of that, I will confess the whole truth:
frightened as at least one of us was of the tiger, the tiger was still
more desperately frightened of his human assailants. I could see clearly
that, so far from rushing out of his own accord to attack us, his one
desire was to be let alone. He was horribly afraid; he skulked in the
jungle like a wary old fox in a trusty spinney. There was no nullah
(whatever a nullah may be), there was only a waste of dusty cane-brake.
We encircled the tall grass patch where he lurked, forming a big round
with a ring-fence of elephants. The beaters on foot, advancing, half
naked, with a caution with which I could fully sympathise, endeavoured
by loud shouts and gesticulations to rouse the royal beast to a sense of
his position. Not a bit of it: the royal beast declined to be drawn; he
preferred retirement. The Maharajah, whose elephant was stationed next
to mine, even apologised for the resolute cowardice with which he clung
to his ignoble lurking-place.
The beaters drew in: the elephants, raising their trunks in air and
sniffing suspicion, moved slowly inward. We had girt him round now with
a perfect ring, through which he could not possibly break without
attacking somebody. The Maharajah kept a fixed eye on my personal
safety. But still the royal animal crouched and skulked, and still the
black beaters shrieked, howled, and gesticulated. At last, among the
tall perpendicular lights and shadows of the big grasses and bamboos, I
seemed to see something move--something striped like the stems, yet
passing slowly, slowly, slowly between them. It moved in a stealthy
undulating line. No one could believe till he saw it how the bright
flame-coloured bands of vivid orange-yellow on the monster's flanks, and
the interspersed black stripes, could fade away and harmonise, in their
native surroundings, with the lights and shades of the upright jungle.
It was a marvel of mimicry. 'Look there!' I cried to the Maharajah,
pointing one eager hand. 'What is that thing there, moving?'
He stared where I pointed. 'By Jove,' he cried, raising his rifle with a
sportsman's quickness, 'you have spotted him first! The tiger!'
The terrified beast stole slowly and cautiously through the tall
grasses, his lithe, silken side gliding in and out snakewise, and only
his fierce eyes burning bright with gleaming flashes between the gloom
of the jungle. Once I had seen him, I could follow with ease his sinuous
path among the tangled bamboos, a waving line of beauty in perpetual
motion. The Maharajah followed him too, with his keen eyes, and pointed
his rifle hastily. But, quick as he was, Lord Southminster was before
him. I had half expected to find the pea-green young man turn coward at
the last moment; but in that I was mistaken: I will do him the justice
to say, whatever else he was, he was a born sportsman. The gleam of joy
in his leaden eye when he caught sight of the tiger, the flush of
excitement on his pasty face, the eagerness of his alert attitude, were
things to see and remember. That moment almost ennobled him. In sight of
danger, the best instincts of the savage seemed to revive within him. In
civilised life he was a poor creature; face to face with a wild beast he
became a mighty shikari. Perhaps that was why he was so fond of big-game
shooting. He may have felt it raised him in the scale of being.
He lifted his rifle and fired. He was a cool shot, and he wounded the
beast upon its left shoulder. I could see the great crimson stream gush
out all at once across the shapely sides, staining the flame-coloured
stripes and reddening the black shadows. The tiger drew back, gave a
low, fierce growl, and then crouched among the jungle. I saw he was
going to leap; he bent his huge backbone into a strong downward curve,
took in a deep breath, and stood at bay, glaring at us. Which elephant
would he attack? That was what he was now debating. Next moment, with a
frightful R'-r'-r'-r', he had straightened out his muscles, and, like a
bolt from a bow, had launched his huge bulk forward.
I never saw his charge. I never knew he had leapt upon me. I only felt
my elephant rock from side to side like a ship in a storm. He was
trumpeting, shaking, roaring with rage and pain, for the tiger was on
his flanks, its claws buried deep in the skin of his forehead. I could
not keep my seat; I felt myself tossed about in the frail howdah like a
pill in a pill-box. The elephant, in a death grapple, was trying to
shake off his ghastly enemy. For a minute or two, I was conscious of
nothing save this swinging movement. Then, opening my eyes for a second,
I saw the tiger, in all his terrible beauty, clinging to the elephant's
head by the claws of his fore paws, and struggling for a foothold on
its trunk with his mighty hind legs, in a wounded agony of despair and
vengeance. He would sell his life dear; he would have one or other of
us.
Lord Southminster raised his rifle again; but the Maharajah shouted
aloud in an angry voice: 'Don't fire! Don't fire! You will kill the
lady! You can't aim at him like that. The beast is rocking so that no
one can say where a shot will take effect. Down with your gun, sir,
instantly!'
[Illustration: IT WENT OFF UNEXPECTEDLY.]
My mahout, unable to keep his seat with the rocking, now dropped off his
cushion among the scrub below. He could speak a few words of English.
'Shoot, Mem Sahib, shoot!' he cried, flinging his hands up. But I was
tossed to and fro, from side to side, with my rifle under my arm. It was
impossible to aim. Yet in sheer terror I tried to draw the trigger. I
failed; but somehow I caught my rifle against the side of my cage.
Something snapped in it somewhere. It went off unexpectedly, without my
aiming or firing. I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, I saw a
swimming picture of the great sullen beast, loosing his hold on the
elephant. I saw his brindled face; I saw his white tusks. But his
gleaming pupils burned bright no longer. His jaw was full towards me: I
had shot him between the eyes. He fell, slowly, with blood streaming
from his nostrils, and his tongue lolling out. His muscles relaxed; his
huge limbs grew limp. In a minute, he lay stretched at full length on
the ground, with his head on one side, a grand, terrible picture.
My mahout flung up his hands in wonder and amazement. 'My father!' he
cried aloud. 'Truly, the Mem Sahib is a great shikari!'
The Maharajah stretched across to me. 'That was a wonderful shot!' he
exclaimed. 'I could never have believed a woman could show such nerve
and coolness.'
Nerve and coolness, indeed! I was trembling all over like an Italian
greyhound, every limb a jelly; and I had not even fired: the rifle went
off of itself without me. I am innocent of having ever endangered the
life of a haycock. But once more I dissembled. 'Yes, it _was_ a
difficult shot,' I said jauntily, as if I rather liked tiger-hunting.
'I didn't think I'd hit him.' Still the effect of my speech was somewhat
marred, I fear, by the tears that in spite of me rolled down my cheek
silently.
''Pon honah, I nevah saw a finah piece of shooting in my life,' Lord
Southminster drawled out. Then he added aside, in an undertone, 'Makes a
fellow moah determined to annex her than evah!'
I sat in my howdah, half dazed. I hardly heard what they were saying. My
heart danced like the elephant. Then it stood still within me. I was
only aware of a feeling of faintness. Luckily for my reputation as a
mighty sportswoman, however, I just managed to keep up, and did not
actually faint, as I was more than half inclined to do.
Next followed the native paean. The beaters crowded round the fallen
beast in a chorus of congratulation. Many of the villagers also ran out,
with prayers and ejaculations, to swell our triumph. It was all like a
dream. They hustled round me and salaamed to me. A woman had shot him!
Wonderful! A babel of voices resounded in my ears. I was aware that pure
accident had elevated me into a heroine.
'Put the beast on a pad elephant,' the Maharajah called out.
The beaters tied ropes round his body and raised him with difficulty.
The Maharajah's face grew stern. 'Where are the whiskers?' he asked,
fiercely, in his own tongue, which Major Balmossie interpreted for me.
The beaters and the villagers, bowing low and expanding their hands,
made profuse expressions of ignorance and innocence. But the fact was
patent--the grand face had been mangled. While they had crowded in a
dense group round the fallen carcass, somebody had cut off the lips and
whiskers and secreted them.
'They have ruined the skin!' the Maharajah cried out in angry tones. 'I
intended it for the lady. I shall have them all searched, and the man
who has done this thing----'
[Illustration: I SAW HIM NOW THE ORIENTAL DESPOT.]
He broke off, and looked around him. His silence was more terrible by
far than the fiercest threat. I saw him now the Oriental despot. All the
natives drew back, awe-struck.
'The voice of a king is the voice of a great god,' my mahout murmured,
in a solemn whisper. Then nobody else said anything.
'Why do they want the whiskers?' I asked, just to set things straight
again. 'They seem to have been in a precious hurry to take them!'
The Maharajah's brow cleared. He turned to me once more with his
European manner. 'A tiger's body has wonderful power after his death,'
he answered. 'His fangs and his claws are very potent charms. His heart
gives courage. Whoever eats of it will never know fear. His liver
preserves against death and pestilence. But the highest virtue of all
exists in his whiskers. They are mighty talismans. Chopped up in food,
they act as a slow poison, which no doctor can detect, no antidote guard
against. They are also a sovereign remedy against magic or the evil eye.
And administered to women, they make an irresistible philtre, a puissant
love-potion. They secure you the heart of whoever drinks them.'
'I'd give a couple of monkeys for those whiskahs,' Lord Southminster
murmured, half unnoticed.
We began to move again. 'We'll go on to where we know there is another
tiger,' the Maharajah said, lightly, as if tigers were partridges. 'Miss
Cayley, you will come with us?'
I rested on my laurels. (I was quivering still from head to foot.) 'No,
thank you, Maharajah,' as unconcernedly as I could; 'I've had quite
enough sport for my first day's tiger-hunting. I think I'll go back now,
and write a newspaper account of this little adventure.'
'You have had luck,' he put in. 'Not everyone kills a tiger his first
day out. This will make good reading.'
'I wouldn't have missed it for a hundred pounds,' I answered.
'Then try another.'
'I wouldn't try another for a thousand,' I cried, fervently. That
evening, at the palace, I was the heroine of the day. They toasted me in
a bumper of Heidsieck's dry monopole. The men made speeches. Everybody
talked gushingly of my splendid courage and my steadiness of hand. It
was a brilliant shot, under such difficult circumstances. For myself, I
said nothing. I pretended to look modest. I dared not confess the
truth--that I never fired at all. And from that day to this I have never
confessed it, till I write it down now in these confiding memoirs.
[Illustration: IT'S I WHO AM THE WINNAH.]
One episode cast a gloom over my ill-deserved triumph. In the course of
the evening, a telegram arrived for the pea-green young man by a
white-turbaned messenger. He read it, and crumpled it up carelessly in
his hand. I looked inquiry. 'Yaas,' he answered, nodding. 'You're quite
right. It's that! Pooah old Marmy has gone, aftah all! Ezekiel and
Habakkuk have carried off his sixteen stone at last! And I don't mind
telling yah now--though it was a neah thing--it's _I_ who am the
winnah!'
X
THE ADVENTURE OF THE CROSS-EYED Q.C.
The 'cold weather,' as it is humorously called, was now drawing to a
close, and the young ladies in sailor hats and cambric blouses, who
flock to India each autumn for the annual marriage-market, were
beginning to resign themselves to a return to England--unless, of
course, they had succeeded in 'catching.' So I realised that I must
hurry on to Delhi and Agra, if I was not to be intercepted by the
intolerable summer.
When we started from Moozuffernuggar for Delhi and the East, Lord
Southminster was starting for Bombay and Europe. This surprised me not a
little, for he had confided to my unsympathetic ear a few nights
earlier, in the Maharajah's billiard-room, that he was 'stony broke,'
and must wait at Moozuffernuggar for lack of funds 'till the oof-bird
laid' at his banker's in England. His conversation enlarged my
vocabulary, at any rate.
'So you've managed to get away?' I exclaimed, as he dawdled up to me at
the hot and dusty station.
'Yaas,' he drawled, fixing his eye-glass, and lighting a cigarette.
'I've--p'f--managed to get away. Maharaj seems to have thought--p'f--it
would be cheepah in the end to pay me out than to keep me.'
'You don't mean to say he offered to lend you money?' I cried.
'No; not exactly that: _I_ offahed to borrow it.'
'From the man you call a nigger?'
His smile spread broader over his face than ever. 'Well, we borrow from
the Jews, yah know,' he said pleasantly, 'so why the jooce shouldn't we
borrow from the heathen also? Spoiling the Egyptians, don't yah
see?--the same as we used to read about in the Scripchah when we were
innocent kiddies. Like marriage, quite. You borrow in haste--and repay
at leisure.'
He strolled off and took his seat. I was glad to get rid of him at the
main line junction.
In accordance with my usual merciful custom, I spare you the details of
our visit to Agra, Muttra, Benares. At Calcutta, Elsie left me. Her
health was now quite restored, dear little soul-- I felt I had done that
one good thing in life if no other--and she could no longer withstand
the higher mathematics, which were beckoning her to London with
invisible fingers. For myself, having so far accomplished my original
design of going round the world with twopence in my pocket, I could not
bear to draw back at half the circuit; and Mr. Elworthy having willingly
consented to my return by Singapore and Yokohama, I set out alone on my
homeward journey.
[Illustration: HE WROTE, I EXPECT YOU TO COME BACK TO ENGLAND AND MARRY
ME.]
Harold wrote me from London that all was going well. He had found the
will which I drew up at Florence in his uncle's escritoire, and
everything was left to him; but he trusted, in spite of this untoward
circumstance, long absence might have altered my determination. 'Dear
Lois,' he wrote, 'I _expect_ you to come back to England and marry me!'
I was brief, but categorical. Nothing, meanwhile, had altered my
resolve. I did not wish to be considered mercenary. While he was rich
and honoured, I could never take him. If, some day, fortune
frowned--but, there--let us not forestall the feet of calamity: let us
await contingencies.
Still, I was heavy in heart. If only it had been otherwise! To say the
truth, I should be thrown away on a millionaire; but just think what a
splendid managing wife a girl like me would have made for a penniless
pauper!
At Yokohama, however, while I dawdled in curiosity shops, a telegram
from Harold startled me into seriousness. My chance at last! I knew what
it meant; that villain Higginson!
'Come home at once. I want your evidence to clear my character.
Southminster opposes the will as a forgery. He has a strong case; the
experts are with him.'
Forgery! That was clever. I never thought of that. I suspected them of
trying to forge a will of their own; but to upset the real one--to throw
the burden of suspicion on Harold's shoulders--how much subtler and
craftier!
I saw at a glance it gave them every advantage. In the first place, it
put Harold virtually in the place of the accused, and compelled him to
defend instead of attacking--an attitude which prejudices people against
one from the outset. Then, again, it implied positive criminality on his
part, and so allowed Lord Southminster to assume the air of injured
innocence. The eldest son of the eldest brother, unjustly set aside by
the scheming machinations of an unscrupulous cousin! Primogeniture, the
ingrained English love for keeping up the dignity of a noble family, the
prejudice in favour of the direct male line as against the female--all
were astutely utilised in Lord Southminster's interest. But worst of
all, it was _I_ who had typewritten the will--I, a friend of Harold's, a
woman whom Lord Southminster would doubtless try to exhibit as his
_fiancee_. I saw at once how much like conspiracy it looked: Harold and
I had agreed together to concoct a false document, and Harold had forged
his uncle's signature to it. Could a British jury doubt when a Lord
declared it?
Fortunately, I was just in time to catch the Canadian steamer from Japan
to Vancouver. But, oh, the endless breadth of that broad Pacific! How
time seemed to lag, as each day one rose in the morning, in the midst of
space; blue sky overhead; behind one, the hard horizon; in front of one,
the hard horizon; and nothing else visible: then steamed on all day, to
arrive at night, where?--why, in the midst of space; starry sky
overhead; behind one, the dim horizon; in front of one, the dim horizon;
and nothing else visible. The Nile was child's play to it.
[Illustration: IT WAS ENDLESSLY WEARISOME.]
Day after day we steamed, and night after night were still where we
began--in the centre of the sea, no farther from our starting-point, no
nearer to our goal, yet for ever steaming. It was endlessly wearisome;
who could say what might be happening meanwhile in England?
At last, after months, as it seemed, of this slow torture, we reached
Vancouver. There, in the raw new town, a telegram awaited me. 'Glad to
hear you are coming. Make all haste. You may be just in time to arrive
for the trial.'