Norrie addressed himself to the penghulu; the chief answered him with gentle explicitness; and Norrie turned again to Colet, grave as the deep shadows and the brooding night. The Malays were watching the two travellers sadly but closely.
“It was only last week, Colet. You are now as near as that to the old original once upon a time. You’ve marched all the way back in one day. It only shows you what a fraud time is. You’ll learn something, before we’ve done with you; but don’t you grin, don’t look at all superior, or the magic will pass, and so may you. Keep your face as confiding as if I were flattering your sound moral character. There’s been a tiger about this patch. These men were too artful, just now, to call him that. They don’t want to hear him again, so they gave him polite and allusive names. You can’t be too careful here.
“But they knew he was a tiger, and more. He took their buffalo and chickens. Any tiger might do that, but soon they had doubts about the sort of tiger this one was. They heard him after dark, for he was an insolent thing, and used to prowl under where you are sitting, night after night. They sat and listened to him snarling. They don’t mind tigers; not very much; they don’t mind tigers who keep their place, and eat pigs and deer. But they do dislike what is more than a tiger when all good people are indoors. Are you listening? These foresters are watching you. They know more about tigers than we ever shall. If you think I am trying to be funny you don’t know me. There is more in the forest about us than these people would care to whisper, at this time of night. There’s a woman they know of, for one thing. She is only a lovely head trailing a length of entrails, and it is the end of you to meet her; and there are voices where nobody will ever be seen; and there was this tiger.
“He was only heard; they never saw him; only his pug marks were seen, but they were plain enough. And he was never heard snarling except when a certain old Malay peddler, a fellow from Sumatra, was in the neighbourhood. First they lost two buffalo, and he had the nerve to eat them where these people could hear him enjoying himself. But the buffalo grew wary after that, and bunched, and he didn’t dare to touch them. Then the chickens went. That was when snarling was heard under this house, after dark, and a tiger’s tracks were found in the morning. One day, though, after the peddler had gone beyond the village, they could hear him, being sick. Somebody had to pass that place afterwards, and, you would hardly believe it, but he saw feathers where that fellow had vomited.
“Well, you ought not to shoot a man, of course, but a tiger is not a man, is it? Especially when it robs you of cattle and chickens, and might take to cannibalism when the fowls were finished. That sort of thing can’t go on. So these men got a gun, rigged it to the proper bait, and put it where a tiger, in the boldness of his confidence, was likely to find it. The end of the story shows that all the suspicions of these people pointed to the truth of the matter. That night they sat here talking, just as we are now, and they heard the brute snarling again. Nobody dared go out. He was certainly hungry. He insulted these people. Once he sprang on to the verandah here, and shook the flooring. Tigers are heavy brutes. He kept sniffing at the door. The penghulu says he could smell the thing. Presently they heard the gun go off, and the tiger roared; it had got him; and then they thought they could sleep. When daylight came they went to the trap, and sure enough there he was. The gun had shot the peddler. There can be no doubt, after that, as the penghulu says, that some men can turn themselves into tigers when they want to. The village buffalo have returned to their old habits. They know things are all right again. And do you think you will hear snarling under you tonight? No, Colet, the reason has gone.”
Colet nodded his head in sad confession of the dubious nature of things. He glanced at the Malays, as a comrade should to those with him in the midst of dark powers; for the Malays were waiting, watchful, expectant of his full understanding. All wise men know these things are true. Over Norrie’s head, high in the gloom of the opposite wall, was a glimpse of moonlit things without, a panel of luminous silver, with the grotesque black shape of a leaf set in it, like the profile of a leering mask.
XXVIII
They had wandered beyond the verifications of the map, which for some time had been little better than the nearest a cartographer could do with what was mainly hearsay. When the country about a camp gave them no hope of gain it was easy to build a house elsewhere; four corner props, some palm leaves laid on cross beams, and a floor of boughs raised well above the ground. A constant fire dried the gear, for the rain, though terse as a rule, made no mistake about it while it was speaking; the fire kept the fanatical leeches at bay, and discouraged the curiosity of night prowlers. Norrie was cleaning his gun. This was one of the mornings when, bent and patient, he sat at a small task suitable for meditation, occasionally pausing to consider the ground before him. His thoughts at such times he did not always avow; they were,
