ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 257 



received the astounding reply : ' Flung the boy to him 

 before that ! ' ' Whose boy was it ? ' ' Mine.' The little 

 nine-year-old fellow sat quite unmoved at these questions 

 and the man's callous replies, just as he had done through 

 the ordeal of the last ten minutes, showing all the apathy 

 of a born fatalist — the inheritance of his race ; not because 

 he was either stupid or blind, for he and his (to our ideas) 

 singular parent had jabbered unceasingly till the tiger 

 appeared on the scene, but merely because it is the habit 

 of their lives to take whatever comes. Such lives are 

 beyond our comprehension, and must remain so until they 

 be drawn into the net of some humanising influence. Mr. 

 L. said he should forget all else of that evening's uncanny 

 experience sooner than the father's hideous answer ; indeed, 

 animal and man alike had quite upset his erstwhile notions 

 as to what was to be expected of a tiger or a father. 



One of my weirdest experiences was sitting up all night 

 in a machan with F. watching for a tiger which did not 

 come ; we only heard him or some other tiger roaring in a 

 muttering, under-his-breath sort of way from hour to hour, 

 sometimes farther off, sometimes nearer. Very chilly, 

 cramping work it was, too, waiting for the night breeze to 

 rustle the leaves around us now and again, that under cover 

 of the sound we might shift our position and relieve our 

 stiffened limbs. It would have been no use to choose a wild, 

 blustering night, for we had to listen too. Not that I 

 should have put any faith in my own hearing when it was 

 a question of tiger ; nevertheless, in the kind of life we led 

 the senses do learn to interpret even the very silences. 



On another occasion — an especially bright night — when 

 we were perched up in the nearest suitable tree to the ' kill,' 

 the expected quarry, a panther, did not come, but a tiger did ; 

 moreover, chose our tree to sharpen his claws on, standing 

 on his hind legs to do it, exactly as pussy does. He saw us, 

 and seemed inclined to await our descent, so there was no 



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