The mask-like countenance of my companion betrayed neither surprise nor any other emotion. The truants were not of his faith nor did they hail from his village. They were but vulgar Annamites, at best a race of sneaking hucksterers. His sympathies were evidently confined to the faithful of his own parish.
I confess I was irritated by his obvious indifference. To my knowledge the forest through which we had passed was infested with tigers and the stunted leafless trees were the most illusory refuge from the brutes. I had an uncomfortable premonition that our pleasure-party, so happily begun, was entering the realms of tragedy.
In the course of our three years' residence in southern Annam no less than twelve natives had been devoured by tigers. Several of the victims were attached to the Mission, and on more than one occasion I had been the hapless witness of their horrible sufferings.
On one occasion a coolie suddenly vanished through the wicker-work floor of our hut, which was built on piles quite nine feet high. The tiger, however, had climbed on to a baulk of timber which was lying on the ground below and using this as a platform had succeeded in catching hold of one end of his victim's waist-cord which happened to be hanging through the interstices of the floor. The beast gave a violent tug and dragged the hapless coolie through the floor. The man, taken by surprise, was helpless and fell, an unresisting prey, into the tiger's jaws.
I feel considerable diffidence in telling a story which I myself should not have believed had the tragedy not occurred before my very eyes.
On another occasion one of my colleagues and myself were taking our evening meal, waited on by a Cham boy about twelve years old. It was shortly after seven, I think, and the rain was falling in torrents. All at once we heard a shriek proceeding from the direction of the kitchen and in a moment the boy entered, white with terror.
"The Tiger," he could hardly get the words out, "seized hold of my coat." He showed us a huge rent in the flimsy material which covered his trembling body. Outside it was pitch dark. We had no lamps and it seemed highly risky to venture forth with so undesirable a neighbour watching us. We quickly set about protecting ourselves by barricading the entrance to the room with a palisade of wattles. The real mystery was how the beast had made its way into the enclosure, guarded as it was by a solid fence made of baulks of timber and forming a veritable blockhouse. An hour later we heard the stamping of hoofs, violent kicks and terror-stricken neighing. Then silence. About midnight our light went out. It would have been madness to go to the kitchen to fetch another, so we found ourselves condemned to wait in the darkness, listening for every sound and our nerves on edge. Needless to say, sleep was impossible. At dawn we ventured out. Everything was in confusion. Our horses had broken loose and stampeded over the fence. One of them lay disembowelled before us and half its hindquarters had disappeared. On the face of the embankment on which our house was elevated, immediately before the door of the room where we had been sitting, were the traces of a tiger's paws clearly visible in the clay.
The boy had not been mistaken. He had indeed been seized by the beast and owed his safety to his worn and tattered clothing. The marks of teeth and claws on some of the baulks of the palisade showed us that the visitor had climbed over. We learnt one lesson from this experience. Our camp, with its solid rampart ten feet high, was only an illusory protection against a really determined man-eater!
All these horrible recollections—and many others which can find no place here, this not being a story of adventure—flashed through my mind in the space of a few seconds.
Meanwhile time was flying and night came down on us unheralded by twilight as in Europe. Our search was all in vain and no answer came to our repeated shouts. The coolies had gone.