Rujub, the Juggler Part 18

"I am glad to be out of that," he said; "six hours in a cage with a woman and a crying brat is no joke."

As soon as the Doctor had got out, the subalterns eagerly examined the tiger, upon which the natives were heaping curses and execrations.

"How many wounds has it got?" they asked the Doctor, who repeated the question to the shikari in his own language.

"Three, sahib. One full in the chest--it would have been mortal--two others in the ribs by the heart."

"No others?" the subalterns exclaimed in disgust, as the answer was translated to them. The Doctor himself examined the tiger.

"No; you both missed, lads, but you need not be ashamed of that; it is no easy matter to hit a tiger even at a short distance on a dark night like this, when you can scarce make him out, and can't see the barrel of your rifle. I ought to have told you to rub a little phosphorus off the head of a match onto the sight. I am so accustomed to do it myself as a matter of course that I did not think of telling you. Well, I am heartily glad we have killed it, for by all accounts it has done an immense deal of damage."

"It has been a fine tiger in its time, although its skin doesn't look much," Wilson said; "there are patches of fur off."

"That is generally the case with man eaters. They are mostly old tigers who take, when they get past their strength, to killing men. I don't know whether the flesh doesn't agree with them, but they are almost always mangy."

"We were afraid for a moment," Richards said, "that the tiger was going to break into your cage; we heard him clawing away at the timber, and as you didn't fire again we were afraid something was the matter."

"The mother was," the Doctor said testily. "The moment the tiger sprang, the woman threw herself down at full length right on the top of my second rifle, and when I went to push her off I think she fancied the tiger had got hold of her, for she gave a yell that fairly made me jump.

I had to push her off by main force, and then lie down on my back, so as to get the rifle up to fire. I was sure the first shot was fatal, for I knew just where his heart would be, but I dropped a second cartridge in, and gave him another bullet so as to make sure. Well, if either of you want his head or his claws, you had better say so at once, for the natives will be singeing his whiskers off directly; the practice is a superst.i.tion of theirs."

"No, I don't want them," Wilson said. "If I had put a bullet into the brute, so that I could have said I helped to kill him, I should have liked the head to get it preserved and sent home to my people, but as it is the natives are welcome to it as far as I am concerned."

Richards was of the same opinion, and so without further delay they started back for the village, where, upon their arrival, they were greeted with cries of joy by the women, the news having already been carried back by a boy.

"Poor beggars!" the Doctor said. "They have been living a life of terror for weeks. They must feel as if they had woke from a nightmare. Now, lads, we will have some supper. I dare say you are ready for it, and I am sure I am."

"Is there any chance for supper, Doctor?--why, it must be two o'clock in the morning."

"Of course there is," the Doctor replied. "I gave orders to my man to begin to warm up the food as soon as he heard a gun fired, and I will guarantee he has got everything ready by this time."

After a hearty meal and a cigar they lay down for a few hours' sleep, and at daybreak rode back to Deennugghur, the two subalterns rather crestfallen at their failure to have taken any active part in killing the tiger that had so long been a terror to the district.

"It was an awful sell missing him, Miss Hannay; I wanted to have had the claws mounted as a necklace; I thought you would have liked it."

"I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Wilson, but I would much rather not have had them. If the tiger hadn't been a man eater I should not have minded, but I should never have worn as an ornament claws that had killed lots of people--women and children too."

"No, I never thought of that, Miss Hannay; it wouldn't have been pleasant, now one thinks of it; still, I wish I had put a bullet into him."

"No doubt you will do better next time, Mr. Wilson. The Doctor has been telling me that it is extremely difficult to hit an animal in the dark when you are not accustomed to that sort of shooting. He says he was in a great fright all the time he was lying in the cage, and that it was an immense relief to him when he heard your rifles go off, and found that he wasn't hit."

"That is too bad of him, Miss Hannay," Wilson laughed; "we were not such duffers as all that. I don't believe he really did think so."

"I am sure he was in earnest, Mr. Wilson. He said he should have felt quite safe if it had been daylight, but that in the dark people really can't see which way the rifles are pointed, and that he remembered he had not told you to put phosphorus on the sights."

"It was too bad of him," Wilson grumbled; "it would have served him right if one of the bullets had hit a timber of the cage and given him a start; I should like to have seen the Doctor struggling in the dark to get his second rifle from under the woman, with the tiger clawing and growling two feet above him."

"The Doctor didn't tell me about that," Isobel laughed; "though he said he had a woman and child with him to attract the tiger."

"It would have frightened any decent minded tiger, Miss Hannay, instead of attracting it; for such dismal yells as that woman made I never listened to. I nearly tumbled off the tree at the first of them, it made me jump so, and it gave me a feeling of cold water running down my back.

As to the child, I don't know whether she pinched it or the doctor stuck pins into it, but the poor little brute howled in the most frightful way. I don't think I shall ever want to go tiger shooting in the dark again; I ache all over today as if I had been playing in the first football match of the season, from sitting balancing myself on that branch; I was almost over half a dozen times."

"I expect you nearly went off to sleep, Mr. Wilson."

"I think I should have gone to sleep if it hadn't been for that woman, Miss Hannay. I should not have minded if I could have smoked, but to sit there hour after hour and not be able to smoke, and not allowed to speak, and staring all the time into the darkness till your eyes ached, was trying, I can tell you; and after all that, not to hit the brute was too bad."

The days pa.s.sed quietly at Deennugghur. They were seldom alone at Major Hannay's bungalow in the evening, for Wilson and Richards generally came in to smoke a cigar in the veranda; the Doctor was a regular visitor, when he was not away in pursuit of game, and Bathurst was also often one of the party.

"Mr. Bathurst is coming out wonderfully, Miss Hannay," Mrs. Hunter said one day, as Isobel sat working with her, while the two girls were practicing duets on a piano in the next room. "We used to call him the hermit, he was so difficult to get out of his cell. We were quite surprised when he accepted our invitation to dinner yesterday."

"I think Dr. Wade has stirred him up," Isobel said calmly; "he is a great favorite of the Doctor's."

Mrs. Hunter smiled over her work. "Perhaps so, my dear; anyhow, I am glad he has come out, and I hope he won't retire into his cell again after you have all gone."

"I suppose it depends a good deal upon his work," Isobel said.

"My experience of men is that they can always make time if they like, my dear. When a man says he is too busy to do this, that, or the other, you may always safely put it down that he doesn't want to do it. Of course, it is just the same thing with ourselves. You often hear women say they are too busy to attend to all sorts of things that they ought to attend to, but the same women can find plenty of time to go to every pleasure gathering that comes off. There is no doubt that Mr. Bathurst is really fond of work, and that he is an indefatigable civil servant of the Company, but that would not prevent him making an hour or two's time of an evening, occasionally, if he wanted to. However, he seems to have turned over a new leaf, and I hope it will last. In a small station like this, even one man is of importance, especially when he is as pleasant as Mr. Bathurst can be when he likes. He was in the army at one time, you know."

"Was he, Mrs. Hunter?"

"Yes. I never heard him say so himself, but I have heard so from several people. I think he was only in it for a year or so. I suppose he did not care for it, and can quite imagine he would not, so he sold out, and a short time afterwards obtained a civil appointment. He has very good interest; his father was General Bathurst, who was, you know, a very distinguished officer. So he had no difficulty in getting into our service, where he is entirely in his element. His father died two years ago, and I believe he came into a good property at home. Everyone expected he would have thrown up his appointment, but it made no difference to him, and he just went on as before, working as if he had to depend entirely on the service."

"I can quite understand that," Isobel said, "to a really earnest man a life of usefulness here must be vastly preferable to living at home without anything to do or any object in life."

"Well, perhaps so, my dear, and in theory that is, no doubt, the case; but practically, I fancy you would find nineteen men out of twenty, even if they are what you call earnest men, retire from the ranks of hard workers if they come into a nice property. By the way, you must come in here this evening. There is a juggler in the station, and Mr. Hunter has told him to come round. The servants say the man is a very celebrated juggler, one of the best in India, and as the girls have never seen anything better than the ordinary itinerant conjurers, my husband has arranged for him to come in here, and we have been sending notes round asking everyone to come in. We have sent one round to your place, but you must have come out before the chit arrived."

"Oh, I should like that very much!" Isobel said. "Two or three men came to our bungalow at Cawnpore and did some conjuring, but it was nothing particular; but uncle says some of them do wonderful things--things that he cannot account for at all. That was one of the things I read about at school, and thought I should like to see, more than anything in India.

When I was at school we went in a body, two or three times, to see conjurers when they came to Cheltenham. Of course I did not understand the things they did, and they seemed wonderful to me, but I know there are people who can explain them, and that they are only tricks; but I have read accounts of things done by jugglers in India that seemed utterly impossible to explain--really a sort of magic."

"I have heard a good many arguments about it," Mrs. Hunter said; "and a good many people, especially those who have seen most of them, are of opinion that many of the feats of the Indian jugglers cannot be explained by any natural laws we know of. I have seen some very curious things myself, but the very fact that I did not understand how they were done was no proof they could not be explained; certainly two of their commonest tricks, the basket trick and the mango, have never been explained. Our conjurers at home can do something like them, but then that is on a stage, where they can have trapdoors and all sorts of things, while these are done anywhere--in a garden, on a road--where there could be no possible preparation, and with a crowd of lookers on all round; it makes me quite uncomfortable to look at it."

"Well, I must be off now, Mrs. Hunter; it is nearly time for uncle to be back, and he likes me to be in when he returns."

CHAPTER IX.

Dr. Wade was sitting in the veranda smoking and reading an English paper that had arrived by that morning's mail, when Isobel returned.

"Good morning, Doctor. Is uncle back?"

"Not yet. He told me he might be half an hour late, and that I was to come round and amuse you until he came back."

"So in my absence you have been amusing yourself, Doctor. I have been round at Mrs. Hunter's; she is going to have a juggler there this evening, and we are all to go."

"Yes, I got a chit from her this morning. I have seen scores of them, but I make a point of never missing an exhibition when I get the chance.

I hate anything I don't understand, and I go with the faint hope of being able to find things out, though I know perfectly well that I shall not do so."

"Then you think it is not all quite natural, Doctor?"