“Apa?” (What does it mean?) I said.
Aboo Din tore his hair and called upon Allah and the assembled Malays to witness that he was the father of this Baboo, but that, in the sight of Mohammed, he was innocent of this witchcraft. He had striven from Hari Rahmadan to Hari Rahmanan to bring this four-year-old up in the light of the Koran, but here he was striding through the jungle, three feet and more at a step, holding to a tiger’s tail!
I shouted with laughter as the truth dawned upon me. It must be so,—Baboo was alive. His footprints were before me. He was being dragged through the jungle by a full-grown Malayan tiger! How else explain his impossible strides, overlapping the beast’s marks!
Aboo Din turned his face toward Mecca, and his lips moved in prayer.
“May Allah be kind to this tiger!” he mumbled. “He is in the hands of a witch. We shall find him as harmless as an old cat. Baboo will break out his teeth with a club of billion wood and bite off his claws with his own teeth. Allah is merciful!”
We pushed on for half an hour over a dry, foliage-cushioned strip of ground that left no trace of the pursued. At the second wet spot we dashed forward eagerly and scanned the trail for signs of Baboo, but only the pads of the tiger marred the surface of the slime.
Aboo Din squatted at the root of a huge mangrove and broke forth into loud lamentations, while the last remaining cur took advantage of his preoccupation to sneak back on the homeward trail.
“Aboo,” I commanded sarcastically, “pergie! (move on!) Baboo is a man and a witch. He is tired of walking, and is riding on the back of the tiger!”
Aboo gazed into my face incredulously for a moment; then, picking up his parang and tightening his sarong, strode on ahead without a word.
At noon we came upon a sandy stretch of soil that contained a few diseased cocoanut palms, fringed by a sluggish lagoon, and a great banian tree whose trunk was hardly more than a mass of interlaced roots. A troop of long-armed wah-wah monkeys were scolding and whistling within its dense foliage with surprising intensity. Occasionally one would drop from an outreaching limb to one of the pendulous roots, and then, with a shrill whistle of fright, spring back to the protection of his mates.