They were lingering now at the edge of the jungle; its spices upon them in the dry air.
". . . And I will wait here in Hurda," Carlin was saying. "You may be gone many days. You may not find him at once, and you will have to wait at Poona, but I shall know when you come. The train coming up is before noon. Listen! You will not find me at the bungalow. No, that would not be the way for us. . . . This will be perfect. I will be waiting for you—our place—back in the monkey glen."
"It is the perfect thought, but you must not go back there alone," he said. "I had not meant to tell you now, but it was that—made me steady—a tiger back there. He gave me nerve for your coming—a good turn it was, the most needful turn! . . . Yes, a tiger lying down on the river margin, as we talked—do not go in deeper, when I am away. . . . And on the day I come, meet me here at the edge of the jungle and we will go in there to our place—together."
CHAPTER VI
Jungle Laughter
It was while Skag was waiting near Poona, for Carlin's eldest brother Roderick Deal, that he became toiled in the snare of his own interest in jungle laughter. It is a strange tale; lying over against the mud wall of the English caste system in India. It is to be understood that a civil officer of high rank in that country is a man whose word is law. His least suggestion is imperative. The usages of his household may not be questioned by a thought, if one is wise.
Police Commissioner Hichens was such a man. He was stationed in Bombay and there is nothing better in appointment in all India. His responsibilities were heavy like those of an empire. Personally he was austere—entirely unapproachable. Of his home life no one knew anything whatever, outside the very few of equal rank. It was understood that the mother of his two small children had died more than a year ago. Some indiscreet person had mooted that she was not sent Home in time. Still, European women do not live long in that climate anyway; and it is common knowledge that to maintain a family requires several successive mothers.
The present Mrs. Hichens was but recently a bride; a mere girl and lovely; but within a few weeks of her landing, Bombay fever had begun to destroy the more tangible qualities of her beauty—which could not be permitted.
It does not take long for the most exalted official to discover that Bombay fever resembles the Supreme Being in that it is no respecter of persons. Yet it was not even so nearly convenient to send this Mrs. Hichens Home, as it had been to send that Mrs. Hichens Home; and that had been quite out of the question. But the Western Ghat mountains furnish a very good barricade against Bombay fever. (Devoutly inclined persons have even intimated that they were specially placed there for the convenience of men who are much attached to their homes.)
Extending a thousand miles parallel with the coast, from five to forty miles inland, built mostly of pinnacles and peaks rising a few hundred or a few thousand feet from near sea level, more rugged than any mountains of their size in the world, the Western Ghats are like a section of Himalaya in miniature. The railway line up has a reversing-station proclaimed far and wide to be the most splendid piece of railway engineering on earth. (That there are several more splendid in the Rocky Mountains is unimportant.)