102 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



asking my help in that strange and melancholy 

 voice. At last the lights of my camp-fires 

 showed in the next dip. I walked on some 

 fifty yards, to where the forest ended in a clear- 

 ing, and then I stopped and listened. The 

 mewing and footfalls had died away, and I 

 knew, as well as if I could see her, that the 

 tigress was sitting on her haunches in the 

 last clump of bushes, sorrowfully watching 

 me pass out of reach of her appeals. Poor 

 creature ! My heart went out to her in her 

 nameless grief. It seemed as if she might be 

 saying 



" ' You all-powerful; you, who can give and 

 take ; you to whom nothing is impossible, who 

 know my harmlessness and have recognised 

 my grief; you who perhaps have cubs of your 

 own, and yet will not come with me a little 

 way it is such a very little way to do that 

 which you could do so easily ! You sympa- 

 thetic ? You to call yourself half-friend of the 

 things that run and fly ? Bah ! I might as 

 well have asked help from the cobra under 

 that stone, or from the monkey coughing in 

 the big fir-tree ! See ! My mood changes ; 

 my tail twitches ; come back out of the moon- 

 light into the shadows, and, lord though you 

 be of the red fires there in the hollow, and of 

 the thing that sends death over the hill-sides 

 and nullahs, I will give you a tiger's thanks 

 for your discourtesy ! ' 



" Poor tigress ! I could do nothing for her, 

 so I went sadly back to camp, but her troubles 

 spoilt my evening, and I lay awake at a late 



