16 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



instead of cowering and growling in the grass, and only 

 running up when mother had finished killing her prey and 

 purred for them, had begun to show signs of the growing 

 ferocity of their nature, and spat and erected their little 

 bristles more and more at each dark tragedy in the woods. 



The young tiger for the cubs were of opposite sexes 

 had by this time shown promise of a more robust growth 

 than had his sister. One day, while together with mother 

 and sister, he was lying up in a leafy shady nook hard by 

 a shrunken pool ; he had wandered a few steps away, and, 

 with head resting on big, outstretched paws, lay watching 

 a drove of grey monkeys, who, fascinated by the awful 

 knowledge that a family of tigers lay under their favourite 

 trees, sat silently and warily aloft. 



There was plenty of tree-room elsewhere, and the well- 

 worn path along the tops of the branches afforded them 

 an easy and secure retreat ; but the lungoors sat there as 

 if mesmerised, unable to tear themselves away from the 

 spot. Perhaps they knew that tigers were no climbers of 

 trees, nor to be feared as the deadly sneaking leopard ; 

 at any rate, there they sat, and scratched themselves 

 pensively, or passed about on the higher boughs, silently 

 enough now after all the excited swearing in which they 

 had indulged when first the striped trio had come up the 

 ravine below. Presbytis entellus, their scientific nomen- 

 clature. And well it suits them, the grizzled old elder of 

 the jungle and his family solemn old presbyters and 

 frisky youths; slim monkey- maidens ; staid monkey- 

 matrons, each with a moaning, puling babe carried clinging 

 tightly to her breast. Now and then there came a little 

 pattering in the dried leaves below, and fragments of 

 jungle nuts and seeds would descend from aloft. 



Mother tigress and sister lay panting in the heat, hardly 

 visible in the deep shade that fell round their sand-girt 

 pool ; but the young tiger had stretched himself somewhat 

 apart, and with solemn, fearsome, upturned orbs steadily 



