In March, 1843, a cultivator who lived at Chupra, about twenty miles from Sultanpoor, went to cut his crop of wheat and pulse, taking with him his wife, and a son about three years old. As the father was reaping, a wolf suddenly rushed upon the boy, caught him up, and made off with him toward the ravines. People ran to the aid of the parents, but soon lost sight of the wolf and his prey.
About six years afterward, as two sipahees were watching for hogs on the border of the jungle, they saw three wolf cubs and a boy come out from the jungle and go down to the stream to drink; all four then ran to a den in the ravine. The sipahees followed, but the cubs had already entered, and the boy was half way in, when one of the men caught him by the leg and drew him back. He was very savage, bit at the men, and seizing the barrel of one of their guns in his teeth, shook it fiercely. The sipahees, however, secured him, brought him home, and kept him for twenty days, during which he would eat nothing but raw flesh, and was fed accordingly on hares and birds. His captors soon found it difficult to provide him with sufficient food, and took him to the bazar in the village of Koeleepoor, to be supported by the charitable till he might be recognized and claimed by his parents.
He is unable to speak or to articulate any sound with distinctness. In drinking, he dips his face in the water, but does not lap like a wolf. He still prefers raw flesh; and when a bullock dies, and the skin is removed, he attacks and eats the body in company of the village dogs.
[Begun in Harper's Young People No. 37, July 13.]
THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN NAVY.
BY BENSON J. LOSSING.
Chapter IV.
Commodore Preble sailed from the United States for the Mediterranean in the frigate Constitution late in the spring of 1803. The ships of the squadron did not sail together. Bainbridge, with the frigate Philadelphia, first entered the Strait of Gibraltar, and found a Moorish corsair cruising for American prizes. He captured her and took her to Gibraltar. When Preble arrived he proceeded to Tangiers with the squadron, when the Emperor of Morocco declared that he had never authorized any depredations on American commerce. The affair was amicably settled. Soon afterward the Philadelphia chased a corsair into the harbor of Tripoli, and in so doing struck upon a sunken rock. She was fast bound. The Tripolitans captured her, made Bainbridge and his officers prisoners of war, and consigned the crew to slavery.
With Preble was Stephen Decatur, a gallant young Lieutenant, son of a veteran naval commander. He was in charge of the brig Enterprise, with which, late in December, he captured a Tripolitan ketch laden with girls which the ruler of Tripoli was sending as a present to the Sultan. The maidens were landed at Syracuse, and the ketch (which was renamed Intrepid) was used by Decatur in an attempt to recapture or destroy the Philadelphia. With seventy daring young men he sailed into the harbor of Tripoli on a bright moon-lit night (February, 1804), the Intrepid assuming the character of a vessel in distress. Most of her officers and men were concealed.