Music nor words, dear reader, can stand me in any stead to convey the sound to you; the first note like the trumpet of a peacock, and the rest the deepest toned thunder. Stones and gravel rattled just behind the hut on the path by which we came and went, and a heavy stey passed and descended the slope into the nullah. I heard the sand crunching under his weight before I dared look. A little peep. Oh, heavens! looming in the moonlight, there he stood, long, sleek as satin, and lashing his tail—he stood stationary, smelling the slaughtered cow. No longer the cautious, creeping tiger, I felt how awful a brute he was to offend. I remembered how he had worried a strong cow in half a minute, and that with his weight alone my poor rickety little citadel would fall to pieces. As if the excitement of the moment was insufficient, the monster, gazing down the dry watercourse, caught sight of his companion, who, advancing up the bed of the nullah, stood irresolutely about twenty yards off. A terrific growl from him, answered not loud but deeply, and I was the strange and unsuspected witness to a catawauling which defies description—a monstrous burlesque on those concerts of tigers in miniature which are occasionally got up, on a cold, clear night, in some of the squares in London, when all the cats for half a mile around get by some queer accident into one area.
Whether it is an axiom among tigers that possession is nine points of the law, or the other monster was the weaker vessel, I know not, but I soon perceived that as my friend made more noise, the other became more subdued, and finally left the field, and retired growling among the bushes. The bully, who was evidently the male, after smelling at the head, came round the carcass, making a sort of complacent purring—"humming a kind of animal song," and to it he went tooth and nail. As he stood with his two fore feet on the haunch, while he tugged and tore out a beef-steak, I once more grasped old "Sam Nock," and ran the muzzle out of the little port. The white linen band marked a line behind his shoulders, and rather low, but, from the continued motion of his body, it was some moments before eye and finger agreed to pull trigger—bang! A shower of sand rattled on the dry leaves, and a roar of rage and pain satisfied me, even before the white smoke which hung in the still air had cleared away, to show the huge monster writhing and plunging where he had fallen. Either directed by the fire, or by some slight noise made in the agitation of the moment, he saw me, and with a hideous yell, scrambled up: the roaring thunder of his voice filled the valley, and the echoes among the hills answered it, with the hootings of tribes of monkeys, who, scared out of sleep, sought the highest branches, at the sound of the well-known voice of the tyrant of the jungle. I immediately perceived, to my great joy, that his hind-quarters were paralyzed and useless, and that all danger was out of the question. He sank down again on his elbows, and as he rested his now powerless limbs, I saw the blood welling out of a wound in the loins, as it shone in the moonlight, and trickled off his sleek-painted hide, like globules of quicksilver. As I looked into his countenance, I saw all the devil alive there. The will remained—the power only had gone. It was a sight never to be forgotten. With head raised to the full stretch of his neck, he glared at me with an expression of such malignity, that it almost made one quail. I thought of the native superstition of singing off the whiskers of the newly-killed tiger to lay his spirit, and no longer wondered at it. With ears back, and mouth bleeding, he growled and roared in fitful uncertainty, as if he were trying, but unable, to measure the extent of the force that had laid him low.
Motionless myself, provocation ceased, and without further attempt to get on his legs, he continued to gaze on me; when I slowly lowered my head to the sight, and again pulled trigger. This time, true to the mark, the ball entered just above the breast-bone, and the smoke cleared off with his death groan. There he lay, foot to foot with his victim of last night, motionless—dead. My first impulse was to tear down the door behind, and get a thorough view of his proportions; but remembering that his companion, the tigress, had only vanished a short time ago close to the scene of action, I thought it as well to remain where I was; so, enlarging the windows with my hands, I took a long look, and then jovially attacked the coffee and brandy bottles, without reference to noise, and fell back on the mattress to sleep, or to think the night's work over. "At last, I have got him: his skin will be pegged out to-morrow, drying before the tent door." When my people came in the morning, they found me seated on the dead tiger. Coolies were sent for to carry the beast, and I gave the pony his reins all the way back to the tent.
After breakfast, the sound of tomtoms and barbarous music greeted our ears; for the Gooroo and half the little village had turned out, and were bringing in the tiger like an Irish funeral. I had a chair brought out, and under the shade of a fine tree superintended the skinning of the tiger; and as I had had no sleep for the last two nights, I determined to make holiday. Dined at half-past six, and had a bottle of Frederick Giesler, and the fumes of his glorious champagne inspired me: "The first rainy day, I will put last night's adventure on paper, and send it home to my old friend Regina."
From Bentley's Miscellany.
A VISIT TO THE "MAID OF ATHENS."
BY MRS. BUXTON WHALLEY.
"Buon giorno, signora! Vi è veramente una bella città! Mà, dov' è la Fenice?" Such was the morning salutation of the Venetian captain in command of the Austrian Loyd steamer which had conveyed us up the Gulf of Corinth, as he pointed derisively to a collection of huts about a stone's throw from the shore, and wondered what could induce any one, voluntarily, to abandon his "sea Cybele" for such as these! So few were they in number, and so small in size, that they had hitherto eluded our notice; nevertheless, they constituted, insignificant as they appeared, the town of Lutraki. The captain's interruption, awakening us from a dream of "Gods and god-like men," was as disagreeable as all such interruptions must be, alike indicating ignorance, and that want of sympathy, which is its natural result. But to the English traveller, who now scarcely dares to hope to find a spot left on Europe where he may look on Nature, unseared by cockneyfied sights and sounds, it ought not to form a very serious subject for complaint. To such an one, sick of Italian cities, where his countrymen assemble but to parade their ennui and their vices, as of German steamboats, on the decks of which they listlessly throng, dividing their glances pretty equally between castles and cutlets—a rock and a ragout—how invigorating is the first sight of Greece, in all its primitive and majestically tranquil simplicity! And what a strangely felicitous epithet does that seem of "voiceless" bestowed by Byron on those shores where nothing is heard, save occasionally the plaintive cry of a sea-gull, and the very gentlest murmur from the waves. There, may be observed in perfection the truth of Chateaubriand's remark, that, "le paysage n'est creé que par le soleil; c' est la lumière qui fait le paysage."
However, our present purpose is to narrate a short episode in modern Athenian life, rather than to dwell on scenes with which genius even can but imperfectly familiarize the world, either by pen or pencil.