Harry looked at her once more tenderly. How beautiful and fresh she was, really! He looked at her, and longed just once to kiss her. Nora’s hand lay close to his. He put out his own fingers, very tentatively, and just touched it, almost as if by accident. Nora drew it half away, but not suddenly. He touched it again, a little more boldly this time, and Nora permitted him, unreproving. Then he looked hard into her averted tearful eyes, and said tenderly the one word, ‘Nora!’
Nora’s hand responded faintly by a slight pressure, but she answered nothing.
‘Nora,’ the young man cried again, with sudden energy, ‘if it is love, take me, take me. But if it is only—only the recollection of that terrible night, let me go, let me go, for ever!’
Nora held his hand fast in hers with a tremulous grasp, and whispered in his ear, almost inaudibly: ‘Mr Noel, it is love—it is love! I love you—indeed I love you!’
When Macfarlane came his rounds that evening to see his patients he declared that Harry Noel’s pulse was decidedly feverish, and that he must have been somehow over-exciting himself; so he ordered him back again ruthlessly to bed at once till further notice.
A LEOPARD HUNT.
It was my good fortune, a great many years ago, to be cantoned at Julbarri. I say ‘good fortune,’ for so I considered it; but I am afraid, if you had asked at our mess for votes as to whether I ought to qualify the word fortune with the adjective ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ I should have got very few to vote for my word. Good fortune I considered it, nevertheless; for I was an ardent sportsman; Julbarri was almost untried ground; and the neighbouring jungles abounded in game of many kinds, among which the rhinoceros, the tiger, and the leopard were by no means few and far between. And yet I cannot deny that for any one who was not a sportsman, Julbarri was about as slow a station as could be picked out in all the length and breadth of our vast Indian empire. It was situated in an out-of-the-way corner of Bengal; and there was no large station within a couple of hundred miles of us where a man with social and gregarious tastes could go for a few days to get rid of the oft-told tales and well thrashed-out politics of the limited circle of our small mess-table. Julbarri was, alas, a single-corps station; and except a Civil officer or two, the whole society consisted of the gallant British officers of the distinguished 76th Native Infantry; a nice set of fellows enough, I allow; but still the best of listeners must in time grow inattentive to Smith’s ideas on the comparative merits of Arab and English horses; and it is difficult to wage any real warfare with Jones as he challenges you for the hundredth time to defend Lord Gough’s tactics at Chilianwalla.
At the time of which I write, our society was at a peculiarly low ebb. The drill season was over; the hot weather was coming on; and the leave season had begun. There was so little work to be done, that our colonel had taken pity on our isolation, and had been unusually, perhaps almost unauthorisedly, liberal in the matter of leave; and our mess, small enough at its best, had dwindled and dwindled, until now not more than half-a-dozen unfortunates daily stretched their legs beneath its well-spread mahogany. For me, the approaching heat had no terrors, the smallness of our society no ennui, and the prospect of escape from Julbarri no charms; for the beginning of the hot weather is the very time when the best shooting can be obtained, and I had long been watching the drying up of the grass in the jungles, and had been looking forward to the time when we might start a tiger with some chance of bagging him. There was one thing in which we were particularly fortunate: we had attached to our regiment nine elephants as a part of our regimental transport. I need scarcely say that it was not long before we had the elephants and their mahouts (drivers) thoroughly trained for shooting. The largest elephants we trained to carry our howdahs, and the smaller we used to form a line to beat the jungles and drive out the game. With these elephants we had lots of fun, and there were few weeks after the shooting season began in which some of us did not go out two or three times. We generally took it in turns; four of us went out, and two remained behind to look after the regiment and the station.
We kept three or four shikarees (native hunters), who were constantly going about the villages and jungles within a radius of six or seven miles of cantonments; and as soon as they heard of a tiger having killed a bullock or any other animal, or as soon as they discovered the fresh footmarks of any animal worth going after, they would come in and give the khubber (news); and then those whose turn it was would send the elephants and their arms on towards where the game had been seen, and would follow themselves on horseback as quickly as possible. The best kind of khubber was when a bullock or any other large animal had been killed. The tiger usually prowls round some village or some place where cattle is pastured and kept for the night; and when he sees his opportunity, will spring on some unfortunate animal which has got separated from the rest of the herd, or has remained out too late in the jungle, heedless of the herdsman’s call home, will kill it with a blow of his paw, and drag it into some neighbouring jungle thicker and denser than that immediately around the village.
Nothing shows more the marvellous strength possessed by the tiger than the way in which he carries his victim away. I remember the first time I was shown where a tiger had dragged a full-grown bullock. I could not believe it possible; and it was not until after we had killed the robber—only an ordinary-sized tigress—and I had carefully gone over on foot the ground where she had dragged her prey, that I found that she had not only dragged the dead bullock—an animal, I should think, considerably beyond her own weight—over very rough ground and through a dense cane-brake; but that in some places, as the marks showed, she must actually have lifted the fore-quarters of the bullock off the ground in her mouth, and have walked several yards with it in that position. When the victim has been dragged to what the tiger considers a position of security, it will sit down and make a good meal, and then retire a short distance from its prey to some particularly thick bush or tuft of grass, and there remain until the following night, and then return for another meal. In consequence of this well-known habit, ‘a kill,’ as it is called, is the best of all khubber, and in such cases, if the tiger has not been disturbed, the sportsman is almost sure to find him lying somewhere close to the carcase; and if his arrangements are well made, is pretty sure to get a shot at him.