His voice dropped to a pathetic little quaver, and he put up his hands with an appealing gesture; but his brown legs were drawn back ready to flee should Aboo Din make one hostile move.
“Baboo,” I said, “you are a hero!”
Baboo opened his little black eyes, but did not dispute me.
“You shall go to Mecca when you grow up, and become a Hadji, and when you come back the high kadi shall take you in the mosque and make a kateeb of you,” said I. “Now put your forehead to the ground and thank the good Allah that the kuching had eaten dog before he got you.”
Baboo did as he was told, but I think that in his heart he was more grateful that for once he had evaded a whipping than for his remarkable escape. A little later the punghulo came up with a half-dozen shikaris, or hunters, and a pack of hunting dogs. The men skinned the mutilated carcass of the only “good tiger” I met during my three years’ hunting in the jungles of this strange old peninsula.
Baboo’s Pirates
An Adventure in the Pahang River
There was a scuffle in the outer office, and a thin, piping voice was calling down all the curses of the Koran on the heads of my great top-heavy Hindu guards.
“Sons of dogs,” I heard in the most withering contempt, “I will see the Tuan Consul. Know he is my father.”