"Is there any truth in the tales about children being carried away, and brought up by wolves in the jungle?"
"Undoubtedly. I once saw one myself; in fact, I'm sorry to say I shot the poor creature."
The boy gasped. Markham went on:
"We were out at the foot of the hills after bear, and coming back to camp one evening something jumped out of the long grass and I fired. You see, I don't often miss, and the thing was dead when we picked it up. It wasn't a monkey, as we thought at first; it was a wild man, covered with hair, and evidently it had always gone on its hands and knees."
"And what did you do?" came the breathless question.
"Buried it," said Markham briefly, "and said nothing about it."
"Oh, do go on!" urged the boy, enthralled.
Markham laughed. "Let me think," he said indulgently. "Well, last year I went up towards the head of the Ganges to shoot crocodile with a fellow who thought he was going to make money over the skins--selling them for bags and cases, and so on--and one morning a villager came to the camp and asked us to shoot the 'mugger' that had swallowed his wife the day before. He was a washerman, and he said he and the woman had just taken the clothes down to the edge of the river, and had begun to wash them, when a crocodile the size of a boat, as he described it, suddenly rose from the water and dragged his wife under. He declared the beast swallowed her whole then and there, and he seemed awfully put out because she was wearing the whole of her jewellery into which they had put all their savings--as the peasant people are in the habit of doing out here. He added that we should know her by that, and by her long hair. She had the longest hair, he informed us with pride, of any woman in the village. He didn't seem to understand that we might shoot dozens of crocodiles and never come across the one that had swallowed his wife; he kept saying we couldn't mistake it because it was the biggest crocodile that had ever been seen or heard of, and he went away perfectly confident that he would get the jewellery back. Oddly enough next day we did see a monster, and managed to bag him, and when we cut him open there was the wretched woman in his inside--jewellery, and long hair, and all! The whole village turned out and salaamed to us as if we had been gods, and they became such a nuisance we had to move on."
"Hullo, Markham! Yarning?" Another member of the shoot came out of his tent fresh from a snooze, and flung himself into an empty chair. "What is it? Ghosts, or tigers, or murders, or witchcraft?"
"It's your turn now," said Markham good-temperedly; "tell him the most hair-raising tale you can think of, and give me a rest. As a policeman you ought to know plenty."