When the wolves are howling."

TENNYSON.

T. NELSON AND SONS
London, Edinburgh, and New York
1892

Contents

  1. [THE OLD GRAY WOLF]
  2. [IN PURSUIT]
  3. [HOW THE SEARCH ENDED]
  4. [THE WOLF'S LAIR]
  5. [NOAK-HOLLY]
  6. [AWAY TO THE HILLS]
  7. [THE RANA'S SONS]
  8. [THE INVITATION]
  9. [OLIVER AND HIS UNCLE]
  10. [A VISIT TO THE RANA'S CASTLE]
  11. [THE FOOTPRINT]
  12. [BEATING THE KOOND]
  13. [CAUGHT IN A TRAP]
  14. [THE HOMEWARD ROAD]
  15. [A LITTLE SAVAGE]
  16. [THE CONCLUSION]

ALIVE IN THE JUNGLE.

CHAPTER I.

THE OLD GRAY WOLF.

Night was brooding over the wide and swampy Bengal plain. The moon had sunk low in the west, and was hiding behind a bank of threatening clouds. Darkness and shadow covered the sleeping world around. But the stilly quiet which marked "the darkest hour of all the night" was broken by the fierce growling of a tiger and a buffalo, fighting furiously on the open highroad, within a dozen yards of Mr. Desborough's indigo factory.

The jackal pack were gathering among the distant hills, already scenting their prey. On they came, rushing down the nearest valley in answer to their leader's call—shrieking, wailing, howling in their haste to be in time to pounce upon the tiger's leavings; an ever-increasing wave of sound that startled the weary factory-workers, sleeping in their mud-walled huts under the mango trees. The pack sweep round the straw-thatched sheds belonging to the factory, and gather in front of Mr. Desborough's house.