Part 1

Produced by Al Haines.

ALIVE IN THE JUNGLE

A Story for the Young

BY ELEANOR STREDDER

_Author of "Jack and his Ostrich," "Archie's Find" etc._

"In the night, O the night. When the wolves are howling." TENNYSON.

T. NELSON AND SONS _London, Edinburgh, and New York_ 1892

*Contents*

I. THE OLD GRAY WOLF II. IN PURSUIT III. HOW THE SEARCH ENDED IV. THE WOLF'S LAIR V. NOAK-HOLLY VI. AWAY TO THE HILLS VII. THE RANA'S SONS VIII. THE INVITATION IX. OLIVER AND HIS UNCLE X. A VISIT TO THE RANA'S CASTLE XI. THE FOOTPRINT XII. BEATING THE KOOND XIII. CAUGHT IN A TRAP XIV. THE HOMEWARD ROAD XV. A LITTLE SAVAGE XVI. THE CONCLUSION

*ALIVE IN THE JUNGLE.*

*CHAPTER I.*

_*THE OLD GRAY WOLF.*_

Night was brooding over the wide and swampy Bengal plain. The moon had sunk low in the west, and was hiding behind a bank of threatening clouds. Darkness and shadow covered the sleeping world around. But the stilly quiet which marked "the darkest hour of all the night" was broken by the fierce growling of a tiger and a buffalo, fighting furiously on the open highroad, within a dozen yards of Mr. Desborough's indigo factory.

The jackal pack were gathering among the distant hills, already scenting their prey. On they came, rushing down the nearest valley in answer to their leader's call--shrieking, wailing, howling in their haste to be in time to pounce upon the tiger's leavings; an ever-increasing wave of sound that startled the weary factory-workers, sleeping in their mud-walled huts under the mango trees. The pack sweep round the straw-thatched sheds belonging to the factory, and gather in front of Mr. Desborough's house.

This was a large one-storied building, looking very much like a Swiss cottage, with its gabled roof and white-painted walls. The broad eaves projected so far beyond the walls that they covered the veranda, which ran right round the house. Like the sheds of the factory, it was thatched. Beautiful climbing plants festooned the columns which supported the veranda, and flung their long trailing arms across the pointed gables. A whole colony of wild birds nestle in the reedy thatch, and find out quiet corners in the cool shadow of that wide veranda. A pair of owls are wheeling round and round. Kites, hoopoes, and blue jays find such comfortable homes beneath Mr. Desborough's eaves, and bring up such numerous families, that the whole place seems alive with twittering wings and chirping voices. But now the flying-foxes, which have hung all day head downwards from the trees like so many black bags, are screaming and chattering at their shrillest.

The hot May night seems more oppressive than ever. There is neither peace nor rest. Every door and window in the bungalow is wide open, for within the heat is intense.

The youngest child is ill with fever, and cannot sleep.

Like so many English fathers and mothers living in India, Mr. and Mrs. Desborough have lost several of their children. Grief for those that were taken from them makes them watch over the dear ones that are left with nervous anxiety. Mr. Desborough had put up a tent on the lawn, hoping the little sufferer might find rest in the fresher air, surrounded by the cool night-breezes and the sweet scent of the flowers.

The poor child was dozing on its mother's lap when the yell of the jackals arose. They were quite safe in their tent; for a mat was tied across the door, and nothing could get in to hurt them. But how was their boy to sleep in such a noise?

The fierce crescendo was reaching its loudest, when Mr. Desborough came out with his loaded gun in his hand, and fired it into the air, hoping the sound of a shot would scare the jackals away. He was right: the pack swept past with a mad rush, helter-skelter on the tiger's track. He paused on the steps of the veranda, and looked cautiously around him.

The dark shadows of the trees were thrown across the dewy grass. Overgrown bushes, swaying in the night-wind, seemed to take to themselves fantastic shapes. His garden might well be described as one wild tangle of flowers. Roses of every shade, carnations, mignonnette, petunias, myrtles, choked each other: tall scarlet lilies and pomegranate flowers caught the twining honeysuckle, and taught its trailing branches to kiss the ground. Amidst this luxuriant profusion, in the glamour of a darkened heaven, it was no wonder Mr. Desborough did not distinguish the flick of a tawny tail, creeping stealthily behind a giant rhododendron. At the sound of the shot the old gray wolf skulked down amidst the folded flowers; and the father, after exchanging a word with his wife, went back to his bed comforted, for his darling, his little Horace, was conscious--yes, conscious--and crying for his twin-brother Carlyon. Racy and Carl, as they were usually called, had never before been parted.

Poor little Racy had not known much about it when his mother sent Carl into another room, and refused to let Kathleen give him one good-night kiss. Kathleen was their only sister--a soft-eyed, fragile girl, about nine years old. She had wept with her father and mother over an empty bassinet; and so, when two little brothers were given to her in one day, her delight knew no bounds. From the hour of their birth she became their devoted slave.

Carl, in the full wilfulness of his second summer, was too little to understand the reason why he was banished from his mother's lap and parted from Racy. He strutted about in his indignant anger, looking as red as a turkey-cock; and no one but Kathleen could do anything with him.

She invented some fresh amusement every time the clamour for Racy was renewed. Her last great success was the manufacture of a bridle of red ribbon for Sailor, a big black retriever, the favourite playfellow of the twins.

Kathleen, too, was wakened by the yelling of the jackals. She heard her father's step in the veranda, and listened to the sound of his gun as if it were a waking dream.

A voracious mosquito, which had crept inside the net curtains which enveloped her little bed, stung her cheek. Up started Kathleen, and called to the ayah, or native nurse, who slept on a mat by Carlyon's cot. Yes, there was something the matter; she was sure of it now. A small dusky hand put back the thin curtains; a gentle, smiling black face peeped at her; and cold water was sprinkled over the flushed forehead and burning pillow, until Kathleen felt refreshed. Her winged tormentor was caught and killed, and the ayah would have left her; but no. Kathleen was broad awake now. She was thinking about her father. Something was the matter. Racy was worse. She begged her ayah to go and see.

Carl was safe in his cot on the other side of the room, forgetting his baby troubles in happy slumber. So the ayah, who fully shared her little mistress's anxiety, ventured outside the curtained screen, or purdah, as they called it, which was drawn half across the open doorway. The room was large and lofty. It was at the corner of the house, with doors opening into the veranda on two sides. This helped to keep it bearable in a usual way, with the help of a great white calico fan fixed to the ceiling. This was called the punkah. Two of the native servants were kept in the veranda all night to work it by turns. They were the punkah coolies. One of them was fast asleep on his mat, and the other was nodding as he lazily pulled the rope which moved the fan. They assured the ayah all was right. No one was afraid of the jackals. They seldom hurt any one unless they were interfered with.

Whilst she was speaking, Kathleen grew impatient, and, persuaded that Racy was worse, she threw aside the thin sheet, her only covering, and ran to the other door. She was not tall enough to look over the purdah, and slipped softly into the bathroom adjoining. All the doors had been set wide open, so she made no noise to waken her little brother. There was no glass in the window of the bathroom. It was latticed, but it too was wide open, and the blind was down. These blinds, or tatties, are made of grass, and are kept damp to cool the air passing through them.

The troubled child managed to unfasten it and push it just a little aside. There was the tent gleaming white beneath the spreading trees. She could hear her mother singing some soothing lullaby. The two tall carriage-horses were cropping the tender buds from the hedge of roses which divided the garden from their paddock. She could see the gleam of the lilied pool beneath the farthest trees, with the fire-flies dancing round its banks like an ever-moving illumination. She heard the cries of the tiger and the deep bellow of the vanquished buffalo, and ran back to her bed in a fright, leaving the blind awry.

They were safe from the tiger; for a tiger always turns away from a fence, and Mr. Desborough's grounds were surrounded by a high bank, with a low stone wall on the top, shutting in garden, paddock, and stable-yard, with only one gate for the carriage, and that was locked. How had the wolf got in--that grim, gaunt creature, which still sat washing its torn shoulder behind the rhododendron unseen by any one? It had had a round with the buffalo before the tiger came out for his midnight stroll, and got that ugly scratch from her antagonist's horn.

So the wolf left the buffalo to the tiger, and plunged into the stream which fed the pool. The water was low, and the wolf was wary. The dive was pleasant. A scramble up the opposite bank landed her in Mr. Desborough's garden. Kathleen's peep-hole did not escape the wolf's observation. She saw the child's white face, and thought of her half-grown cubs. She dashed through the window, under the loosened blind, leaped clear over the row of tall earthenware water-jars which stood before it, and followed the child into the sleeping-room. Her unerring scent guided her to the cot where Carl lay tossing. He had thrown off the thin covering, and was fighting away the mosquito-net which enveloped his cot. She seized the child in her teeth, and was over the purdah with a bound.

Kathleen's wild shriek of terror called back the ayah.

The first fault gray of the summer twilight entered with her, and rested on Kathleen's long fair hair, but the empty bed in the other corner was still in shadow.

"Carl! Carl!" gasped Kathleen, and fainted in her nurse's arms.

The hubbub that arose among the coolies who were sleeping in the veranda, the frantic cries of "Sahib! sahib!" brought Mr. Desborough to the scene of dismay.

He had reloaded his gun, and snatched it up as he came, out of all patience at the ill-timed noise, when he had enjoined silence on every one whilst his darling boy was sleeping at last--a sleep which, undisturbed, meant life.

Seeing nothing to account for the consternation among his servants, he was on the point of refusing to listen to their entreaty.

"Shoot, sahib, shoot! a booraba by the nursery!"

"A booraba--a wolf!" he repeated, discharging his gun into the air with the rapidity of lightning, as anger changed to fear.

"Unloose the dogs!" he cried, preparing to give it chase, as his keen eye detected a break in the bushes of the garden, and the trampled heads of the flowers, which marked the track of the wolf. He knew very well that not one of his Hindu servants would dare to kill it, even if they had the chance. It was a matter of conscience with them. It was a thing they would not, dare not do, under any circumstances; but they flew like the wind to obey his commands.

The hounds came bounding round him, and were soon on the trail of their midnight visitor. They scented the wolf to the edge of the pool, and then paused at fault, poking with their noses among the water-lilies, and looking round at their master with short, angry barks.

Evidently the wolf had once more taken to the water, and the scent was lost. Mr. Desborough saw something moving on the other side of the pool, among the reeds and grasses.

He quickly readjusted the barrel of his gun, and was preparing to fire, when his chuprassie, the Hindu servant who carried messages in the day and watched the premises at night, caught his arm, exclaiming, "No, no, sahib! no shoot booraba."

Mr. Desborough shook him off angrily, and levelled his gun.

"Shoot booraba, shoot baby!" cried out another of his servants, who had just overtaken him. The poor fellow was trembling like a leaf.---"Come to the beebee, Kathleen!" he entreated. "Come quickly!"

The truth flashed upon the father's mind--the wolf had already entered his nursery. He rushed to his wife's tent. His servants stopped him.

"The mem-sahib" (for so they called their mistress)--"the mem-sahib knows nothing yet. Spare her till we are sure."

One stride, and Mr. Desborough was over the veranda railing, parting the chintz curtains of the nursery purdah. The ayah threw herself at his feet, and began to tear her hair.

Now Mr. Desborough knew very well that his black servants exaggerated dreadfully. Their excited imaginations magnified everything. It is the way in the East, and a bad way it is. Having had two or three false alarms, he never believed more than half they told him. Could he believe them now? "Where is Kathleen?" he demanded sternly.

In another minute Kathleen's face was buried on his shoulder, as she sobbed out her piteous story. "A dog, papa--a huge, horrid, lean, lank dog--rushed out of the bathroom, and ran away with Carl."

*CHAPTER II.*

_*IN PURSUIT.*_

It was all too true. The punkah coolie was fanning an empty cot--the child was gone.

With Kathleen fainting in her lap, even the ayah had not missed poor Carl in the moment of her return. It was but a moment ere the alarm was raised, yet the wolf had carried off her prey.

Charging the servants on no account to let the mother discover that her boy was missing, until he returned, Mr. Desborough started in pursuit.

Like most English gentlemen in India, he was a keen sportsman, and loved to hunt the wild hogs in the bamboo swamps, with a party of his friends, and plenty of native trackers and beaters to find the game and drive it out of the thickets.

But he dare not wait to call his friends to his help. He started forth alone with his coolies, to find which way the wolf had gone.

Tall trees were growing on either side of the high-road, upon which his gate opened. A broad ditch behind them drained the road in the rainy season, when floods arose so easily. It was many feet deep; and now the water ran low between its banks, dried up by the great heat. The jackal pack had retired with the growing daylight; the tiger had slunk away before the rising sun. Well might Mr. Desborough shudder and turn away from the remnants of the dead buffalo, as he trembled for the fate of his child. The country all around him was well cultivated. Rice and dall (another kind of grain much grown by the Hindu villagers) covered large fields along the course of the stream. They were interspersed by clumps of trees and groves of date-palms growing amidst patches of jungle and tangle.

But the increasing heat had reduced the watercourse to a succession of glistening pools, connected by a muddy ditch.

Already the hounds were busy among the fringe of bushes which overhung its margin. Mr. Desborough mounted his horse, and galloped after them, with the broad white hat belonging to the lost child in his hand.

He soon came up with the dogs, and whistling them to his side, he leaned down from his saddle, and made them smell the hat and sun-veil (or puggaree) little Carl had worn the evening before.

They sniffed it well over, looked up in their master's face with their keen, intelligent eyes, and started once again in swift pursuit.

They had passed the closed gates of the indigo factory, but encountered one or two of the native workers there, who had risen with the sun, and were watering their fields and gardens before the business of the day began. The district was studded with wells. The water was drawn by bullocks into huge skins.

But they left their skins on the brink of the well, and joined the servants, who were throwing stones among the bushes, and howling with all their might, to make the wolf show.

The noise brought out old Gobur from his little homestead by the riverside. Mr. Desborough paused by the bamboo paling which surrounded the little enclosure, which was neither yard nor garden, but partly both. He knew the aged Hindu had been a chakoo, or look-out, in his prime. The different hunting-parties in the neighbourhood used to hire Gobur to go before them into the jungle, to watch which way the wild beasts were roaming.

He was the very man to help him.

Within the bamboo fence was a tangle of wild roses and creepers, twining about the roots of the luxuriant fruit-trees shading the low mud hut in which the old man lived; a tiny well sparkled like crystal in the rosy light.

The old man was gathering sticks to light his fire in the one clear space beyond his trees.

He threw them to a graceful dusky figure just peeping out of the door of the hut, and came to the sahib's assistance. The shouts of Mr. Desborough's servants, as they hurled about the biggest stones they could raise, had told him only too plainly what had happened.

All the native Bengalese knew well the dangerous propensity of the wolves in May, and guarded their babies with double vigilance.

He knew the hat in the father's hand, and with scant words but many gesticulations tried to make him understand the wolf was probably hiding in one of the coverts near. If they scared her out, she might drop the child; for it was that one dreaded month in all the year when the wolves take home their prey alive to their half-grown cubs.

There was hope in the old man's words, and the father caught at it. Yet he dared not fire into the dwarf cypress, where they all fancied the wolf might be. No; his gun was useless on his shoulder, for he might shoot his child. He could only follow the example of his coolies, and join his shouts to theirs, until they wakened the echoes. Jackal, wolf, and night-hawk had alike disappeared with the rising dawn. Gobur warned him a tiger might yet be moving, as the morning breeze blew cool and fresh after the sultry night.

"Well, Desborough," demanded the cheery voice of an English neighbour, "up with the sunrise, like myself, to catch a mouthful of fresher air after frying indoors all night? But what on earth is all this row?"

The speaker was an English officer who was taking his morning ride betimes, foreseeing still greater heat as the day advanced. He was followed by his syce, or native groom.

"The heat has done it," he exclaimed, as he heard the father's piteous tale. "The streams are drying up among the hills, and the wild beasts are driven to the cultured plains to seek for water. I heard a tiger grunting all night in the river; many may be lingering in the thicket for their mid-day sleep. Poor fellow! you'll see your baby no more."

The kind-hearted major turned his head away, he could not look the distracted father in the face, as he added, "Be a man, Desborough. Thank God for this fresh breeze; it will save your other child--think of that."

But his syce pressed forward, with a low salaam, to the unhappy sahib, to assure him he heard the cry of a child from the grass by the river, pointing as he spoke to a waving forest of graceful feathery blades, full twenty feet high.

"Cries of monkeys!" interrupted his master angrily, provoked to see his poor friend tantalized with hopes which seemed to him so utterly delusive.

He reined in his horse by his side, and tried to reason with him on the probable fate of his child. They passed a group of sleepy vultures, perched upon a boulder stone. If the poor baby had been dropped living amidst the fields, how could it escape destruction? Even Mr. Desborough was afraid to place much trust in the syce's words, with the ever-increasing chattering of monkeys and screaming of birds. He looked at the wide plains around him, and at the great herds of graceful, delicate-limbed, smoke-coloured cattle, which were now being slowly driven out to pasture. For the brief tropical twilight was over, and day had fairly begun. The air was full of cries. The voices of the night had but given place to the myriad voices of the day. Was it possible for any one to distinguish between them? He heard, or seemed as if he heard, the shriek of his child mingling with every sound, and he knew it was not real. He heard it amidst the bellow of the fierce, ungainly-looking buffaloes, who were marching forth in troops from many a native village, followed by flocks of goats and bleating sheep.

With a hope which Mr. Desborough said hoarsely "was no hope," he rallied his men to beat the huge thicket of grass, and drive out any living thing lurking within it. Afraid of hurling stones at a venture into such a tangled mass, the coolies armed themselves with long sticks, which they struck with a sharp, ringing sound on the bark of the nearest trees. A scampering was heard. The grass swayed hither and thither. There was a cry.

"Nothing but the scream of a frightened pig," persisted the major. "It is the very spot for a wild boar's lair."

He reined in his horse, and stationed himself where he could command a good view of the thicket. Mr. Desborough had chosen his post already, on the opposite side, and was watching as if he were all eye, all ear. Old Gobur had gone round to the back of the thicket. Nothing could escape them rushing from it.

"Not too near," shouted the major to his friend. "Have a care for your own life! No one knows yet what it is we have dislodged."

As they watched the heaving grass, another cry arose in the distance, prolonged and hideous. But the friends knew well what it meant. A party of travellers were approaching, and their tired bearers were calling out for a relay of men from the village to come and take their places.

"Ho, coolie, coolie, wallah! ho-o-o-o-o!" seemed to ring through the air from all points, confusing every other sound. Mr. Desborough's eye never moved from the heaving mass before him. Out rushed a whole family of wild pigs--a "sounder," as the major called it. They were led by a grim old boar with giant tusks, the very picture of savage ferocity. He glared around him, ready to charge the enemy who had dared to disturb him. He was followed by pigs of every age and size, from a venerable sow, tottering along from her weight of years, to squealing, squeaking infants, who could scarcely keep pace with their mothers. Oh, the screaming and the grunting, the snorting and chasing, as the whole family of pigs rushed across the opening towards the nearest mango grove or tope!