THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.

by Herbert Strang.

CHAPTER I

OUT OF THE NIGHT

"Jolly good curry!" said Bob Jackson, looking up over his spoon. "What do you say, Mac?"

"Ay," responded Alan Mackenzie, in a drawl. He was a man of few words.

"Your Hamid is certainly a treasure of a cook," Jackson went on. "Has he done you yet, d.i.c.k?"

"Probably, but I haven't found him out, so it doesn't matter," answered d.i.c.k Forrester, the third of the party. "It shows you!"

"What?" asked Mackenzie, who always required statements in full.

"Why, you owl, that it's sometimes better to rely on your instincts than on the advice of kind busybodies. When I came through Calcutta, everybody advised me to wait till I got up country before engaging a man, told me the casuals of the Calcutta hotels were sharks ready to prey on any griffin, and so on. But I came across Hamid, liked the look of him----"

"You've a rummy taste in looks," interposed Jackson, with a laugh.

"What with his crooked nose and his one eye, he can't pa.s.s for a beauty."

"And that's a fact," said Mackenzie, solemnly.

"Well, anyway, I took him on, and that's three years ago, and I've had no reason to regret it."

"He's a champion cook, at any rate," said Jackson.

"He is that," added Mackenzie, with emphasis.

At this moment the man in question entered with the next course, and further discussion of his qualities was impossible.

The three young fellows were taking their evening meal in a tent pitched near the bank of a stream some twenty miles north of Dibrugarh on the Brahmaputra. They were almost the same age, Mackenzie, the eldest, having recently completed his twenty-first year. Three years before, they had met as strangers on the deck of the liner conveying them to Calcutta, and had struck up one of those shipboard friendships which seldom last. In their case it was otherwise. All three were learning tea-planting in a.s.sam, and, as the "gardens" on which they were severally engaged were many miles apart, their opportunities of foregathering were not very frequent. But they met as often as they could for sport in the form of snipe-shooting, boar-hunting, and other avocations that diversify the monotony of a planter's life, and they had become good comrades, knit one to another closely by the bonds of mutual trust and knowledge.

Three months' leave was now due to each of them. Forrester intended to go home: the others had arranged to make an extended tour in Northern India, and see Delhi, Lah.o.r.e, and other cities of old renown. But it happened that, a few days before they were to start, they heard that a tiger had been doing mischief in a village some thirty miles from their stations. Fired by the news, they got permission from their managers to make a dash for the scene. Elephants were out of the question. They made the journey on foot, with four coolies to carry the baggage, Forrester's bearer, Hamid Gul--the man whom he had picked up in Calcutta, and who added to his many accomplishments a considerable skill in cooking--and a veteran shikari named Sher Jang, whose services they had often employed in their sporting expeditions. Sher Jang, with the aid of local talent, tracked the animal to its haunt in the jungle; after a few crowded moments it fell to the white men's guns; and its skin, already stripped from the carcase by the deft shikari, now lay stretched on the sward near the tent.

"Excuse, sahib!" said Hamid Gul, as he pa.s.sed behind his master's chair after handing round the cutlets. He had been so long accustomed to use English of a sort with globe-trotters that he seldom spoke Hindustani with his master, like the average native servant.

"What is it?" asked Forrester.

The man's reply was to dangle a four-inch centipede before his eyes.

"It had cheek to crawl up honourable back, sahib," he explained.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The man dangled a four-inch centipede before his eyes.

"It had cheek to crawl up honourable back!" he said.]

"Kill the beast!" said Forrester.

Hamid dropped the centipede, settled it with his heel, and moved silently out of the tent.

"I can stand mosquitoes, but centipedes make me squirm," said Forrester.

"If you know any sound more horrid than the plop of a centipede falling from the roof to the floor, tell me."

"To me the drone of a mosquito is ten times worse," said Jackson.

"Apparently they don't like you, but they can never have enough of me, the brutes!"

"Soft and sweet!" murmured Mackenzie.

"What's the tiger-skin worth, d.i.c.k?" asked Jackson, ignoring the Scotsman's jibe.

"I don't know; but a goodish sum, probably. A man-eater's skin is usually mangy, but old Sher says that this is in good condition. Look out, Bob!"

Jackson ducked his head, already warned by a booming noise like the hum of an aeroplane engine that a beetle had flown in at the door. They watched the insect whirling about, until it came blindly in contact with the tent pole, and fell to the ground. There it lay on its back, spinning round and round with ever-increasing uproar, until Mackenzie picked it up, and flung it out--into the face of Hamid, approaching with the dessert.

The three men soon finished their meal, and, taking their camp chairs, went out into the open. When they were seated, Hamid came up with a bra.s.s salver filled with glowing charcoal, and presented to each a pair of small silver tongs with which to lift a ruddy chip for lighting his pipe. He prided himself on keeping up old customs. Then, with a good-night salaam, he pa.s.sed into the tent to clear away.

It was a glorious night. The candlelight from the open tent paled in the rays of the moon, soaring aloft in a cloudless sky. A faint breeze stirred the feathery tops of the jungle gra.s.s, and ruffled the gla.s.sy surface of the rivulet. From the distance came the piercing lugubrious notes of bull frogs; the air sang with the hum of innumerable insects; ever and anon a bat flitted past like a shadow. At one side of the tent, on an upturned tub, sat Sher Jang, the shikari, smoking a long pipe, and gazing solemnly into s.p.a.ce. A few yards away the coolies squatted round their camp fire, replete from their unaccustomed meal of tiger's meat, which they had devoured in the joyous belief that it would endue them with a ferocious courage.

The white men puffed away in silence, thinking over the day's sport, dreaming, maybe, of the antic.i.p.ated delights of the approaching holiday.

Hamid noiselessly finished his work, and then crouched with his pipe on a mat by the tent, studiously ignoring Sher Jang, as a cat ignores the dog on the hearthrug.

Thus half an hour pa.s.sed. Then Mackenzie's cutty dropped from his mouth, and he snored.

"Hullo, Mac, it's time you turned in!" said Forrester, shaking him by the arm.

"Ay," said Mackenzie, sleepily. "Where's my pipe?"

"At your feet."

The Scotsman picked it up, stood erect, yawned, stretched himself, then suddenly dropped his hands to his sides.

"What's yon?" he said.

His companions sprang up. They, too, had heard a rustling in the jungle close at hand--a sound louder than the swish and sc.r.a.pe of the gra.s.s in the breeze. Sher Jang came up to them silently, and handed them their rifles. They heard the sound again, and stood in line, peering into the thicket up-stream, their fingers on the triggers.

The rustle ceased.

"Is it a tiger?" Forrester whispered in Hindustani to the shikari.

"No, sahib; tigers make no noise. It may be a bear."

"Or a native?" suggested Jackson.

"No, sahib; _badmashes_ might prowl at dawn, but not in the night. I think it is a bear."

The rustle recommenced, and drew nearer and nearer. The white men waited with bated breath, ready to fire the instant the beast showed itself. Hamid had not moved; he was no sportsman, and trusted the sahibs to preserve him from harm. The coolies had run behind the tent.