No. IV
THE TIGER'S TAIL
I
Curiously enough a very curious thing happened to the other foreign curiosity that Johnson maximus sent to Dr. Dunstan. You may remember that Johnson, who is in the merchant service, brought the Doctor home a parrot and a tiger's skin, and that strange things overtook the parrot, especially after death. Well, strange things also overtook the Bengal tiger's skin, owing to me and Freckles and Smythe. I am Macmullen, and the real name of Freckles was Maine, and he came from Australia and had a great ambition to be a bush-ranger in course of time, and revive the practice of bushranging in New South Wales. Among other things that he had was an important bowie-knife—the same the Chinese boy, Tin Lin Chow, borrowed to commit 'harri-kari' with and failed. Well, with his great feeling for sport, Freckles naturally felt a good deal of interest in the tiger's skin, and often went to look at it in the Doctor's study. It was a good one, no doubt—white and yellow and black, with a long tail and a very fine head. In this head were glass eyes, like life, and the mouth was open and pink, with terrific teeth—worn smooth where the tiger had chewed his prey.
FRECKLES OFTEN WENT TO LOOK AT IT IN THE DOCTOR'S STUDY.
Then there came to Merivale a kid called Smythe. He was very small, but pretty solid and rather decent, and keen as mustard, and fiery in colour too.
It's a rum thing with boys, that some get chums with the greatest ease and some never do. And also the boys who often want to make chums never do, for some reason or other. But this kid soon made chums, though I couldn't tell you why. Of course he was nothing to me, because I'm thirteen—in fact, nearly fourteen—but for a chap just ten he was all right, and other chaps of his own age found him interesting. He had a lot of rather peculiar knowledge, gathered up from his father, who was a very learned man and wrote books for libraries. And he believed in heathen charms and old sayings, and remembered many queer things that his father had told him. He wanted to be the caretaker of a museum some day, but said that he hoped to be allowed to travel round the world first, like Darwin did, and see dwarfs and giants, and write books, and shoot a few specimens of different things not often heard of.
Of course he went through the ordinary adventures of new boys at Merivale, and it was in the matter of the 'kid test' that he became so generally known as a kid out of the common.
There is, just beyond the cricket ground, and before you come to the wood, a huge clump of rhododendrons that is covered with purple flowers in May. It is just the sort of place that a wild beast would choose for its lair, if there were wild beasts at Merivale, and it was a regular thing with kids to tell them that a savage animal did live there, and only came out at night. This beast was a test of the pluck of new kids, and the new kid who would walk past the rhododendrons after dark alone, was considered to be all right. Of course something was done to make it seem more terrible, and, in fact, till he left, John Batson, the gardener's boy, was always told to hide in the rhododendrons, and shake the bushes and growl when a test was being made. This he did very well, having a chronical sore throat, and a very harsh and growling voice, like a ferocious beast. But he had to go, owing to some row with the servants, and the new gardener's boy could only squeak, and was useless for the test. Generally, however, somebody in the fifth could be got, and for some time Freckles kindly obliged when a test had to be made. It amused him, and he growled very fairly well, and could also imitate wolves in a state of hunger, which he had once heard at a menagerie.