“REALLY, Captain Guise, you need trouble yourself no more in the
matter; I am quite able to take care of myself!” cried young Cornet
Stanley, with a little impatience in his tone.
The speaker was a blue-eyed lad, whose fresh complexion showed that he
had not been long in the burning climate of India. Cornet Stanley had
indeed but lately left an English home, for he was little more than
sixteen years of age. With very anxious feelings, and many tears,
had Mrs. Stanley parted with her rosy-cheeked Norman. “He is so very
young,” as she said, “to meet all the trials and temptations of an
officer’s life in India!”
Mrs. Stanley’s great comfort was that her Norman would have a tried
and steady friend in her cousin, Captain Guise, who would, she felt
sure, act a father’s part to her light-hearted boy. Young Stanley was
appointed to the same regiment as that of the captain; and almost as
soon as the cornet had landed in India, he proceeded up country to join
it. The season of the year was that which is in India called the cold
weather, when many Europeans live in tents, moving from place to place,
that they may amuse themselves with hunting and shooting. Norman
Stanley, who had never before chased anything larger than a rabbit,
was delighted to make one of a party with two of his brother officers,
and enjoy with them for a while a wild, free life in the jungle. There
would have been no harm at all in this, had Norman’s new companions
been sober and steady young men; but Dugsley and Danes were noted as
the two wildest officers in the regiment.
Captain Guise was also out in camp, and his tent was pitched not very
far from that of his young friend Norman. The captain took a warm
interest in young Stanley, not only for the sake of his parents, but
also for his own; for the bright rosy face and frank manner of the
lad inclined all who met him to feel kindly towards him. It was with
no small regret that Captain Guise, on the very first evening when
the officers all dined together, saw that young face flushed not with
health, but with wine, and that frank manner become more boisterous
than it had been earlier in the day. Not that Norman Stanley could
have been called drunk, but he had taken a little more wine than was
good for him to take; and his friend knew but too well in what such a
beginning of life in India was likely to end.
The captain was a good and sensible man, and he could not see his young
relative led into folly and sin without warning him of the danger into
which he was heedlessly running. Captain Guise, on the following day,
therefore, visited Norman in his tent, and tried to put him on his
guard against too close a friendship with Dugsley and Danes, and to
show him the peril of being drawn by little and little into intemperate
habits.
Norman Stanley, who thought himself quite a man because he could wear a
uniform and give commands to gray-bearded soldiers, was a little hurt
at any one’s thinking of troubling him with advice. Captain Guise had,
however, spoken so kindly that the lad could not take real offence at
his words, but only tried to show his friend that his warning was not
at all needed.
“I shall never disgrace myself by becoming a drunkard, you may be
certain of that,” said the youth; “no one despises a sot more than I
do, and I shall never be one. As for taking an extra glass of champagne
after a long day’s shooting, that is quite a different thing, and
nobody can object to it.”
“But the extra glass, Norman, is often like the thin point of the
wedge,” said the captain; “it is followed by another and another, till
a ruinous habit may be formed.”
“I tell you that I shall never get into habits of drinking,”
interrupted young Stanley. Then, as he took up his gun to go out
shooting, the cornet uttered the words with which this little story
commences.
Captain Guise did not feel satisfied. He saw that his young friend
was relying on the strength of his own resolutions, and in so doing
was leaning on a reed. He could not, however, say anything more just
then, and Norman Stanley started a new subject to give a turn to the
conversation.
“By-the-by, Captain Guise, I’ve not shown you the prize which I
captured yesterday. As Dugsley and I were beating about in the jungle,
what should we light upon but a tiger-cub—a real little beauty, pretty
and playful as a young kitten.”
“What did you make of it?” asked the captain.
“Oh, I’ve tethered it to the tree yonder,” said Norman, pointing to
one not a hundred yards distant. “By good luck I had a dog’s chain and
collar which fitted the little creature exactly. I mean to try if I
can’t rear it, and keep a tiger-cub as a pet.”
“A tiger-cub is rather a dangerous pet, I should say,” observed
Captain Guise, with a smile.
“Oh, not a bit of it!” cried Norman, lightly; “the little brute has no
fangs to bite with, and if it had, the chain is quite strong enough to”—
The sentence was never finished, for while the last word was yet on the
smiling lips of the youth, the sudden sound of a savage roar from a
neighboring thicket made him start, turn pale, and grasp his gun more
firmly. Forth from the shade of the bushes sprang a large tigress. In
a minute, with a few bounds, she had cleared the space between herself
and her cub! Snap went the chain, as the strong wild beast caught up
her little one in her mouth; and before either Norman or the captain
(who had snatched up a second gun) had time to take aim, the tigress
was off again, bearing away her rescued cub to the jungle!
“That was a sight worth seeing!” exclaimed Captain Guise; “I never
beheld a more splendid creature in all my life!”
Norman, who was very young, and quite unaccustomed to having a tiger
so near him with no iron cage between them, looked as though he had
not enjoyed the sight at all. “I should not care to meet that splendid
creature alone in the jungle,” he observed. “Did you not notice how the
iron chain snapped like a thread at the jerk which she gave it?”
“Yes,” replied Captain Guise, as he turned back into the tent; “what
will hold in the cub, is as a spider’s web to the full-grown wild
beast. You had, as I told you, a dangerous pet, Norman Stanley. You
might play for a while with the young creature, but claws will lengthen
and fangs will grow. And,” the captain added more gravely, “this is
like some other things which are at first but a source of amusement,
but which are too likely to become at last a source of destruction.”
Norman Stanley’s cheek reddened, for he felt that it was not merely of
a tiger’s cub that his friend was speaking. Evil habits, which at first
seem so weak that we believe that we can hold them in by a mere effort
of will, grow fearfully strong by indulgence. Many a wretched drunkard
has begun by what he called merely a little harmless mirth, but has
found at last that he had been fostering something more dangerous still
then a tiger’s cub. His good resolutions have snapped; he has been
carried away by a terrible force with which he has not had the strength
to grapple; and so has proved the truth of the captain’s words, that
what is at first but a source of amusement may be at last a source of
destruction.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]