The Three Sapphires Part 4

It is soul racking to awaken in a strange room, startled from sleep by unplaceable sounds, to experience that hopeless lostness, to mentally grope for a door or a window in the way of a familiar mark to a.s.sist one's location. When Captain Swinton was thrust out of deep slumber by a demoniac tumult he came into consciousness in just such an environment.

Lost souls torturing in Hades could not have given expression to more vocal agony than the clamour that rent the night.

Swinton was on his feet before he had mentally arranged his habitat. He groped in the gloom for something of substance in the sea of uncertainty; his hands fell upon the table, and, miraculously, a match box. Then he lighted a lamp, pushed out into the pa.s.sage, and saw Lord Victor's pajamaed figure coming toward him.

"What a bally row!" the latter complained sleepily. "Must be slaughter!"

Out on the veranda, they located the vocal barrage; it was being fired from the bungalow in which they had seen the bulky figure in white.

Perhaps the vociferous one had seen their light, for he was crying: "Oh, my lord and master, save me! Tiger is biting to my death! I am too fearful to explore across the compound. Heroic masters, come with guns!"

"Oh, I say! What a devilish shindy!" Lord Victor contributed petulantly.

"Is that bounder pulling our legs?"

"It's a baboo, and a baboo has no sense of humour; he doesn't pull legs," the captain answered. "But he does get badly funked."

Another voice had joined issue. Swinton knew it for a "chee-chee" voice, a half-caste's.

"Yes, sar," the new pleader thrust out across the compound; "we are without firearms, but a prowling tiger is waiting to devour us."

He was interrupted by a bellowing scream from his companion, an agonised cry of fright. As if in lordly reproach, the clamour was drowned by a reverberating growl: "Waugh-h-h!"

"Gad, man! Devilish like a leopard!" And the captain darted into his room to reappear with a magazine rifle. A bearer came running in from the cook-house, a lighted lantern in his hand, at that instant.

"Here, Gilfain," Swinton called, "grab the lantern. If it's a leopard he'll slink away when he sees the light, so we may not get a shot. Come on!" He was dropping cartridges into the magazine of his rifle. "Pardus is probably sneaking around after a goat or a dog. Come on; keep close behind me so the light shines ahead."

"I'm game, old chappie," Lord Gilfain answered cheerily. "Push on; this is spiffen!"

The gravel was cruel to their bare feet, but in the heat of the hunt they put this away for future reference. As they neared the other bungalow the captain suddenly stopped and threw his gun to his shoulder; then he lowered it, saying: "Thought I saw something slip into the bushes, but I don't want to pot a native."

They reached the bungalow, and as Swinton pushed open a wooden door he was greeted by wordy tumult. Screamed phrases issued from a bedroom that opened off the room in which they stood.

"Go away, jungle devil! O Lord! I shall be eated!"

"Don't be an a.s.s! Come out here!" the captain commanded.

The person did. One peep through the door to see that the English voice did not belong to a ghost, and a baboo charged out to throw his arms around the sahib, sobbing: "Oh, my lord, I am safe! I will pray always for you."

Pushed off by Swinton, he collapsed in a chair, weeping in the relief of his terror.

The baboo's prodigal grat.i.tude had obliterated a companion who had followed him from the room. Now the latter stood in the radiancy of Lord Victor's lantern, saying: "Baboo Lall Mohun Da.s.s has been awed by a large tiger, but we have beat the cat off."

The speaker was a slim, very dark half-caste clad in white trousers and jaran coat.

"It is Mr. Perreira." And Baboo Da.s.s stopped sobbing while he made this momentous announcement.

"What's all the outcry about, baboo?" the captain asked.

"Sar," Baboo Da.s.s answered, "I will narrative from the beginning: I am coming from Calcutta to-day, and Mr. Perreira is old friend, college chum, he is come here to spend evening in familiar intercourse. We are talking too late of pranks we execute against high authority in college.

Kuda be thanked! I have close the window because reading that mosquito bring malaria--ugh!" With a yell the baboo sprang to his feet; Perreira, leaning against the centre table, had knocked off a metal ornament.

"Excuse me, masters, I am upset by that debased tiger." He collapsed into a chair.

"What happened?" Swinton queried sharply, for his feet were beginning to sting from the trip over the gravel.

"We hear mysterious noise--tap, tap; some spirit is tickle the window. I look, and there, masters, spying at me is some old fellow of evil countenance; like a _guru_, with grey whiskers and big horn spectacles.

But his eyes--O Kuda! Very brave I stand up and say, 'Go away, you old reprobate!' because he is prying."

"Oh, my aunt!" Gilfain muttered.

"Then that old villain that is an evil spirit changes himself into a tiger and grins at me. Fangs like a shark has got--horrible! I call loudly for help because I have not firearms. Then I hear my lord's voice out here in the room and I am saved."

"Yes, sar, that is true," Perreira affirmed. "I am not fl.u.s.tered, but hold the windows so tiger not climbing in."

Lord Victor, raising the lantern, looked into the captain's eyes. "What do you make of these two bounders?"

"You'd better go back to bed, baboo," Swinton advised; "you've just had a nightmare--eaten too much curry."

But Baboo Da.s.s swore he had seen a beast with his hands on the window.

"We'll soon prove it. If the tiger stood up there, he will have left his pugs in the sand," Swinton declared as he moved toward the door. He was followed by the baboo and Perreira, who hung close as they went down the steps and around the wall.

As Gilfain pa.s.sed the lantern close to the sandy soil beneath the window, Swinton gave a gasp of astonishment, for there were footprints of a tiger, the largest he had ever seen; their position, the marks of the claws in the earth, indicated that the great cat had actually stood up to look into the room.

"Well, he's gone now, anyway," the captain said, turning back to the driveway. "You'd better go to bed, baboo; he won't trouble you any more to-night."

But Mohun Da.s.s wept and prayed for the sahib to stay and protect him; he would go mad in the bungalow without firearms.

"I say, Swinton," Lord Victor interposed, "these poor chaps' nerves seem pretty well shimmered, don't you think? Shall we take them over to our bungalow and give them a brandy?"

The captain hesitated; he didn't like baboos. But when Perreira acclaimed: "Yes, sar, a peg will stimulate our hearts--thank you, kind gentleman; and his highness, the rajah, will thank you for saving me, for I am important artisan," his dead-blue eyes glinted.

"Come on, then!" he said, picking his way gingerly over the gravel.

Inside the bungalow, Swinton tossed his keys to the bearer, saying: "Bring----" He turned to Perreira: "What will you have, brandy or whisky?"

The half-caste smacked his bluish lips. "Any one is good, sar."

But Lall Mohun Da.s.s interposed: "Salaam, my preserver, I am a man because of religious scruples teetotal, and whisky is convivial beverage; but brandy is medicinal, prescribed by doctor."

Swinton nodded to the bearer, and when the latter, unlocking the liquor cabinet, brought the brandy and gla.s.ses, he said: "Put it on the table and go." Then, at a suggestion, Perreira poured copious drafts for himself and Baboo Da.s.s.

As the water of life scorched its way through the thin veins of the half-caste he underwent a metamorphosis. The face that had looked so pinched and blue grey with fear took on a warmer copper tint; his eyes that had been l.u.s.treless warmed till they glowed; his shoulders squared up; the jaran coat sagged less.

"Ah, sahib, you are kind gentleman." Without invitation, he dragged a chair to the table and sat down. At a nod from Swinton, the baboo drew up another. The captain and Lord Victor sat down, the latter rather puzzled over his companion's mood. He knew Swinton's rigid ideas about a.s.sociation with the natives; particularly what he called the "greasy Bengali baboo."

The brandy had quieted Mohun Da.s.s' terror. His eyes that had constantly sought the open door with apprehension now hovered benignantly upon the bottle that still graced the centre of the table.

"Yes, sar, kind gentleman," Perreira said; "if I'd had a hooker of brandy like that and a gun like that 'Certus Cordite'"--he pointed to the weapon Swinton had deposited on the floor--"I would go out and blow that fool tiger to h.e.l.l."

Baboo Da.s.s gave a fatty laugh. "Do not believe him, kind gentlemans--he make unG.o.dly boast; he was crawled under the bed."