Chapter XVI
When Captain Swinton and Major Finnerty arrived at the bungalow a note was sent to Lord Victor asking him to come up on horseback, as they were going off into the jungle.
Knowing that servants' ears were animate dictaphones, the two sahibs ate breakfast in comparative silence, the strenuous morning after the black leopard having braced their appetites.
Later, at restful ease in big chairs, the major said: "In this accursed land of spies one must find a place where his eyes reach farther than his voice. That, by the way, was a trick of a clever tiger I killed, the Gharwalla man-eater, through discovering that when he had made a kill he would drag the body to a certain bare hilltop from which he could watch for danger. He'd been driven up to a gun so often that he was shy of secret places. There was something grewsome about that tiger's fiendish cunning. His favourite trick was to crouch in cover that overhung a roadway, and as a bullock cart came along pick off the driver with a flying leap and carry him to this hilltop for a leisurely meal. There was a pool close by, and, after eating, he would take a drink, roll in the sand, and then go quite a mile to thick cover for a sleep. I potted him when he was having one of his sand baths. You've seen a dog roll on a rug in the ecstasy of a full stomach, but with this chap there was something wondrously beautiful—if one could forget the horribleness of it—in the play of those terrible muscles and the undulating curves of the striped body as he rolled in luxurious ease, paws fanning the air and his ivory-studded jaws showing in an after dinner yawn. I watched him for ten minutes, fascinated by the charm of subtle movement combined with strength, for I was well hidden in a thick growth of rose bramble, its mottled colouring of pink and grey and green deceiving his quick eye. I was lying flat, my 10-bore covering him. When I gave a low whistle the big head faced me, and the eyes, hardened to a yellow-green murder look, were straight on. But just below the jaw was a spot with no hard skull to deflect the heavy, soft-lead ball, and behind that feathered curl of white hair was the motor of that powerful machine—the heart. He never knew what struck him. The whole cavity was just pulp—heart and lungs—when we skinned him."
A native who had come in from the jungle now came to the verandah. "Huzoor," he began, "we knew that Burra Moti was near in the night, for Raj Bahadar was restless, cocking his ears and making soft speech through his trunk to the cunning old lady; but maybe on account of the camp fire, which we had lighted to show her that it was but a party of men who would eat and had sweet cakes for elephants who approached in a friendly spirit, she came not in. We could hear the bell tinkle, tinkle, tinkle——"
"You fool! Why do you mix lies in your report; the elephant had no bell."
Undismayed, the man answered: "The mahout maintained as much, sahib, but we all heard the bell, and Moti was in a sweet temper, for she laughed, as elephants do when they are pleased."
"It was a bird you heard—the sweet-singing shama, or a chakwa calling to his mate across a stream. Did you see her?"
"It was still dark, but we could hear Moti sigh as though her heart was troubled because she could not come to partake of the cakes we burned so that they would be known in her nostrils."