"Why, the brave little maid who came alone through the jungle to send us to your assistance. You must make much of her, for it was the deed of a heroine. You would not find many, much older than she, who would have done so brave a thing."
Ralph raised himself upon his elbow. "Oh!" cried he, "was it Sunshine, the little maid whom we missed?"
"I did not ask her name," replied Brudenel. "She said that the white boy had saved her life, and that of her grandmother; and she had walked twenty miles, over mountains and through jungle paths, to fetch us. She was quite exhausted on her arrival, and Mrs. Brudenel kept her to rest and recruit. You all owe your lives to her."
"God bless her!" murmured Ralph.
Yes, it was little Miss Sunshine to whom they had all owed their rescue. She knew of what the dacoits were capable; she was very fond of both Kirke and Ralph, who had petted her, taught her many things, given her many little treasures, ingeniously contrived after English fashion.
They had played with her, and been always courteous to her—as gentlemen should ever be. No sooner had Ralph fetched her down from the blazing hut, than she hid herself in the jungle to watch the course of events. She saw the repulse of the dacoits, and tracked them to their lair in the jungle afterwards.
There, understanding their speech so thoroughly, she discovered that the leader was the terrible Moung Nay Nya, the tiger, the terrible robber who was tattooed by the "Bandee-tha," and carried a ghastly "beloo" upon his chest, inoculated with a preparation compounded of dead men's flesh, which he had also chewed during the whole time that the operation had lasted.
The "beloo" nature had thus entered into him, and given him the strength and ferocity of a wild beast itself. Sunshine had often heard of him, and shuddered, from the place of her concealment, to observe the marks which she had so often heard described.
There was the horrible demon face on the man's broad muscular chest, with tail wound in voluminous folds around it, and claws extended beneath. There were the square-shaped charmed indentations which prevented bullet or sword-thrust from injuring the tiger-man, tattooed in both red and blue; there was a row of charmed stones let in beneath the skin of his neck, each of which endowed him with some wizard power or ensured him safety in combats.
She noticed the long lean arms, the powerful hands, the muscular body, the sunken cheeks and cruel determined mouth, and trembled in every limb to think of his seizing her. She softly slipped farther and farther back under the shadow of the trees, and thought.