Part 7

"Strange," said the boy; "but I have something here for you that is stranger still."

As he was speaking Oliver unpacked a lump of clayey earth, and showed it to him with an elation he could scarcely conceal.

"Look at that, Mr. Desborough. Do you see those marks? What are they?" he demanded breathlessly. "The print of a child's foot," he added, after a momentary pause. "The most sagacious hunter among the hills dug it up two nights ago at the entrance of the koond by the ruined temple. It is proof positive that a wild child is wandering in the jungle. Can it be your lost little one?"

The father's hand trembled as he held up the lump of earth to the fast-decreasing light.

"Send for Iffley!" he exclaimed.

"He is waiting for you, Mr. Desborough--waiting at my uncle's with the wonderful old man who dug up the footprint. We have gathered the most experienced beaters and trackers from the villages round. By the time we reach my uncle's bungalow he will have everything ready to beat the koond."

Mr. Desborough waited to hear no more. He was already striding across the open space between the sheds towards his home. Oliver hurried after him. The sky above them was darkened by a fluttering host of beating wings. Look which way they would, the air was thick with locusts, appearing like dark-red spots in the increasing gloom, but white as snowflakes where the sunlight still lingered.

The fearful hullaballoo the factory-workers were making to prevent the locusts settling down was caught up and redoubled by every ghareewan at the factory gate. The living cloud that now completely overhung the place was slowly and surely descending.

Up went the shower of stones, forcing it to rise some feet into the air and flutter further.

The men knew well if the locusts were once permitted to settle, not a green leaf would be left in the village, and the sahib's garden would become a barren waste before sunrise.

The exceeding singularity of the sight, which held Mrs. Desborough spell-bound on her veranda, was altogether lost upon her husband, who saw nothing but his children slowly returning from their evening stroll, like all the rest of the world, gazing upwards. Oliver alone cast a wary eye at the monkeys, who, having given the young stranger notice to quit in their most peremptory fashion, were making off again to rob the nearest fruit-shop whilst its owner stood gazing at the wondrous insect army hovering in mid-air.

Mr. Desborough snatched his boy from under the ayah's arm, pulled off his shoes and socks, and bade him stamp his feet with all his might on the garden bed.

Mrs. Desborough called out in horror, for she thought some one of the myriad insects in earth or air would be sure to dart a fiery sting into the pretty "pink, five-beaded sole."

Determined to spare her the burning suspense which Mr. Desborough was telling himself was sure to end in the bitterest disappointment, he would not let Oliver enter the compound.

"Iffley has sent for me," was all the explanation he volunteered as he seized the gardener's spade, and dug up the clod upon which Horace had been stamping. He dared not tell her more, for he saw too plainly her grief for the missing little one was sapping her life. Any sudden shock and a spasm at the heart might snatch her from him in a moment.

*CHAPTER XII.*

_*BEATING THE KOOND.*_

As the boondee, with its two Mysore oxen, came in sight, Major Iffley, who had been watching for it at the gate of the deputy's compound, rode out to meet it.

"Come, old boy," he said to Mr. Desborough; "we are only waiting for you. Marching orders have been out an hour or more. Come in and change your coat. No use going on an errand like ours in any colour but dead-leaf brown. St. Faine has got one waiting for you. Only be quick, for the brutes have not yet left their lair, and we have a four-mile ride to reach it."

Out sprung Mr. Desborough. Dare he put so much faith in a few faint marks on a crumbling clod? Yet he was the first in the saddle as the hunting-train set forth from Runnangore. A most singular sight awaited them. As they looked down into the valleys they saw them filled with fluttering wings, and every mountain height encircled by its reddish cloud. All locusts, and nothing but locusts. Vultures and kites flew about in great disorder. A cold breeze from the hills told of the probability of a coming storm. In sheltered places the oppression in the air was awful. The locusts called off the attention of the men, but they also concealed them from the keen, bright eyes that were waking up with thoughts of evening prey.

As they drew nearer the hills, the ground became so rough and broken the horses began to stumble. There was nothing for it but to dismount, leave the horses with the grooms, and proceed on foot. Tara Ghur, the old hunter with the wonderful Tartar eye, took the lead. On, on they crept in perfect silence, until they perceived the sheen of a pool of water sparkling at their feet. It lay at the base of a projecting spur of rock, and was overlooked by the picturesque ruins of a native temple. It was small, and overgrown with tall tropical weeds. The flight of steps to the temple court was half buried in mud. The white pillars of the colonnade which surrounded it were still unbroken, but the dome above the shrine had fallen in. Yew and cypress flourished on the spot where Hindu suppliants were used to bring their offerings to Mata Devee, the dreaded goddess of destruction.

How strange Oliver felt it to be living in a land where idols abound! One by one they climbed the broken stair, and gathering round the prostrate figure of the fallen idol, arranged their plan. From this ascent they looked down upon the sombre depths of the rugged koond. Round the shoulder of the hill, on the other side, was the entrance to a similar gorge. Tara Ghur led them towards the one in which he had dug up the footprint. He sent the jogies forward one after the other, like a living ladder, until they reached the topmost height of the precipice at the back of the koond.

Another division, who were to act as scouts, climbed the trees, some of them warily venturing further and further into the leafy abyss, leaping like monkeys from bough to bough.

Mr. Desborough, the deputy, and the major took up their position where the opening was the narrowest, so that no living thing hiding within the darkest recesses could rush out unseen. Mr. Desborough and the deputy were on one side; the major, Oliver, and the old shikaree on the other. The space between them was scarcely more than fifty yards across. Old Tara had marked the trees commanding the surest outlook. Mr. Desborough was the first to mount to his post of observation. The hunter handed him up his loaded gun.

"No, no," said the father; "no firing."

"No firing!" repeated the major. "Then how do you expect to recover the child from a pack of raging wolves? Face the truth like a man, Desborough. If your boy is alive in this jungle, some wolf has adopted him, and it will guard that child with all the affectionate fidelity of a noble-hearted dog."

"Ah! but you need the true, clear eye and unerring hand of a William Tell. Not one of us possesses them. No, no; I dare not suffer a single shot to be fired," answered the father desperately.

"Well," interposed the deputy soothingly, "nothing of the sort may be necessary. We are not yet sure this child, if child there be, is yours. Trust us, we have come to save it, not to hurt it. Still, I say, we must rescue it at all risks."

"Time, sahib, time presses," urged the shikaree.

They climbed into their appointed places. The deputy and Mr. Desborough on their side commanded the better view. Then the jogies began their work at the back of the koond, hurling down fragments of rock and stones, striking and crashing among the trees, beating tomtoms and howling with all their might. The terrific row they made was repeated by the hollow echoes from the opposite side of the winding gorge, and was enough to scare even bears and tigers from their sleep.

The shouts redoubled. A tiny white flag, waving on the top of a long bamboo, fluttered above the tree-tops. It was the signal from the jogies on the heights. Something had been viewed. All the father's life seemed centring in his eye and ear. The cry of the jackals was beginning. The scream of the owls was echoed back from the temple ruins, where the bats were wheeling in endless circles. Then up rose the moon, flooding the temple hill with its silvery radiance, and giving an exaggerated profundity to the depths of the ravine. The pool, or jheel, below the overhanging rock shone like a burnished shield. In the open ground between, which the beasts must cross as they were driven out of the koond, any object could be clearly seen. Then the scouts who were posted in the trees by the sides, each with his matchlock, blazed away with powder only, to prevent any of the beasts rushing up the steep, and turn them back towards the watchers by the entrance. There was a crashing and heaving in the thick underwood. A tiger showed and hid again in the jow.

Oliver's heart gave a great bound. Oh no, it was not fear! But he felt the presence of danger, and his cheek grew pale with excitement. Not a shot was fired; not a sound escaped them. There must be nothing to intimidate the other inmates of the koond which might be following. The dead silence was broken only by the tiger's grunting. Did it scent its foes in the trees around? It did what nothing but a tiger could ever do--sent its innocent young cub before it into the danger. What a contrast between the tiger and the wolf! But for once the unsuspecting young one did not fall a sacrifice to its mother's selfishness. It ran towards the water, crouching in the moonje grass which tigers love so well. Another furious onslaught from the jogies, and the mother flashed past like lightning, rearing up and roaring as it plunged into the jheel. The scouts came down from the trees and began to talk. They were half afraid the tiger was the only game that would show that night. Should they move on to the second koond to seek for the wolves? Then Tara Ghur bade all be still. His ear detected a movement in the distance--a tremor among the leaves, which no one else would have perceived. The scouts changed their places, flying back to the trees, and blazed away as before.

They were near to that korinda bush, but they did not know it. The tiger had started, and the patriarch of the wolves gave tongue from the other koond.

Mr. Desborough turned away from the darkness of the koond to watch the gaunt, lean, savage forms that were gathering on the moonlit ground to follow the track of the tiger. A movement in the tangle around escaped him. But Tara Ghur was aware of it. Oliver saw him bend forward, and his eye was quick to follow the hunter's. Tara knew that something was coming along the track where he dug up the footprint.

That footprint! The father was thinking of it. The trace was so slight, yet it was exactly like Horace's. His heart was sickening with suspense. Were they on a wrong scent, after all? thought the major, when out leaped the family from the korinda, with answering cries to the leader of the pack, who was rushing down the slope. The appalling howls of his following, as they gathered from brake and bush, might have chilled the stoutest heart. No child was there. The tall grass bent and swayed about the tree; then a small white form bounded from the midst of it like a kangaroo, but the old gray wolf was beside it.

Shouts from opposite sides of the ravine gave warning that something had been sighted. The small white thing dropped in the towering grass. A gun was fired. It was Major Iffley's. The wolf had pounced upon her nursling. The gun was loaded with small shot for the purpose. The major fired along the ground. The wolf received the charge in her shoulder. They could see her clawing the earth as she felt the pain, and then dropped down as if she were dead in the tufted grass. They could hear the screams of the terrified child.

"Carl! Carl!" Mr. Desborough called in coaxing tones of fatherly endearment, which rose to command as he met with no reply. The scouts were darting from point to point, as far as ground and jungle permitted. The three friends sprang down from the trees, only charging Oliver to stay were he was. They loaded their guns with ball, and advanced cautiously to within a yard or so of the giant grass tuft. They stationed themselves at even distances, that whichever way the wolf leaped out they might be ready to shoot him sideways through the head, so that the ball should not enter the tuft of grass. Their first object was to rouse the wolf and make it show. They trusted that terror would prevent the child leaving the shelter in which it lay concealed.

Tara Ghur had broken off a tall branch from the tree in which he had remained, and creeping along one of its mighty arms, peered down into the grass, but could see nothing. He stirred it up with the broken branch, but roused nothing except a screaming pea-hen.

He leaped to the ground. "The wolf is gone!"

"But the child--the child!" gasped Mr. Desborough, laying down his gun and forcing his way into the tangled mass. No child was there. The wolf had doubled upon them so swiftly and so stealthily, it seemed as if the ground had opened to swallow it up. The scouts jumped down from their trees, and all separated, taking different paths, to try and find which way the wolf had gone,--all but the old shikaree and Oliver, who was still aloft. Mr. Desborough was foremost; he no longer waited for the hunter's guidance. Yes, he had seen his child. He believed now it was his fair-haired boy. He had seen him and lost him again. The thought was madness. The major, gun in hand, kept close beside him.

Tara Ghur, who seemed, like the owl, to possess the power of seeing in the dark, was tracing the way the wolf had come, not the path by which it had fled from them.

Oliver, beginning to be afraid of being left behind in so wild a spot, climbed down again and followed the hunter, who was the last to leave it. The sailor-boy had climbed so high into his tree, thinking to gain a more commanding view, that he had not seen all that was taking place at its foot. Having first met Oliver in the company of the Rana's son, old Tara Ghur regarded him with something of the devotion and respect he felt for his native chief. He knew the boy was safest by his side, and invited him by gesture to follow. So the two crept on through the pathless wild no foot but theirs had ever penetrated.

If Oliver had found it hard work forcing his way with Gobur through the grass clump by the river, it was nothing to the task before him now. There were sudden drops into unseen nullahs, or watercourses, and a dangerous climb in the darkness up the steep bank, facing rolling stones from the jagged heights above. Now and again their only course was to climb the trees, and swing themselves from bough to bough. But through it all the hunter traced out the path of the wolf with an unerring dexterity that was perfectly marvellous to Oliver, tracking its course to the sweeping boughs of the deserted korinda bush.

The bones about the gray wolf's home were gnawed and dry. It was evident the hungry mother had suppered her young family on snails and field-mice; and she must have gone far afield for these, for the hunting-grounds about the hairy nest had been clearing fast of late. Old Tara tried to explain his purpose, but Oliver did not half understand. He could only watch what the hunter was doing, and second his efforts whenever he could.

"Child been here, sahib!" exclaimed Tara Ghur suddenly, after carefully groping round and round the well-made lair.

But their object was to capture, not to kill, and Oliver began to wonder more and more how this could ever be effected.

The shikaree paused in perplexity. He had passed his life among the wildest fastnesses of the district. He had watched the ways of the living creatures who lorded it there. He had studied the tastes, habits, and disposition of every creature in the forest. He was well aware the wolves would draw to their lair with the return of day, and prepared to watch the night out by the korinda bush. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike him. He sprang up and began anew to examine the ground around the path the wolf had chosen. A deep hole, the burrow of some wild animal, gave him intense satisfaction. He heaved aside the decaying arm of a tree which had fallen across it. Oliver came to his help, and adding his strength to that of the wiry hunter, they dislodged it altogether, and laid the burrow open.

Oliver saw that it was a dangerous pitfall, and wondered what was to be done with it.

Tara leaped down and began to enlarge it with the hunting-knife he carried in his belt. Then he tore off a huge piece of bark from a neighbouring tree, and pulled up a shrub by the roots. With this impromptu shovel and broom he set himself to clear out the loose earth and stones which had collected in the bottom of the hole.

Oliver meanwhile was keeping guard over the shikaree's skin of meal and the earthen pot, which on this particular occasion did not contain water. What it did contain he could not imagine, for the edge was sticky in the extreme. Before the moon began to wane the burrow was enlarged to a good-sized pit. The shikaree grew exultant. He beckoned to Oliver to follow him, and the two wandered about among the trees until they found some giant leaves of a bauhinia creeper.

They stripped the stem as far as they could reach, and returned with their load of leaves to the edge of the pit.

The shikaree spread them on the ground before it. Then he smeared them over with the contents of his jar.

"What is it?" thought Oliver--"bird lime?"

Then he saw what the clever old man was about--making a wolf-trap.

*CHAPTER XIII.*

_*CAUGHT IN A TRAP.*_

Whilst Oliver and the old shikaree were working hard in the moonlight, Mr. Desborough and his friends were in hot pursuit of the flying wolves.

The major, who was the keenest sportsman of the three, gave it as his opinion that their wisest course was to keep the pack in sight. The wolf with the child was rushing from its covert in answer to the patriarch's call, and would be sure to join the others sooner or later.

Up came some of the jogies, breathless and panting, to declare they had heard the cry of the child far up the hill, toward the temple ruins. If so, the wolf must have been retreating to the second koond, on the other side of the hill. The deputy, who was anxious to pick up his nephew, turned back to beat it with another party of the jogies, who were examining the tracks about the jheel.

"Mind you beat up stream," shouted the major, as he sprang into his saddle, prepared to give chase to the wolves.

They came up with the pack at the head of a valley, where they were picking the bones of a spotted deer some tiger had brought down. But no child was among them. In a country so full of cover it was impossible to say where the little fugitive might be hiding. So they posted chakoos, or lookouts, all about, to give instantaneous notice if anything showed.

In the gray of the dawn, disheartened and weary, the friends drew together once again. Hunting-flasks were taken out, and counsel held in the weed-grown court of the temple.

"Our hour is coming," said the major cheerily. "Wait until the day is well up, and we shall find the child asleep under one of these bushes. Now for some lure to make it show. We must beat them all."

"And frighten him into idiocy, if his dawning sense has not been scared away already! He knew me no longer," exclaimed Mr. Desborough.

"Surely he would recognize his mother's voice," put in the deputy.

"I dare not risk the torture of suspense like this for her; but we might have Kathleen. If he remembers anything, it would be Kathleen," answered Mr. Desborough.

"Send for her at once without alarming Mrs. Desborough," said the deputy, taking out his pocket-book; and scribbling a note to his niece, he despatched his syce with it to Runnangore.

At a very early hour, Bona's dandy appeared once more at the gate of the compound at Noak-holly.

"I have come in the cool of the morning," she said, "to fetch your little girl to spend the day at Runnangore. You must not refuse her to me, dear Mrs. Desborough, for Mr. Desborough wishes her to accept my invitation."

But Kathleen did not much like Bona, and did not want to go, until Bona whispered, "Hush! not a word; but come you must. They are searching for Carl in the jungle."

Oh how tedious it seemed to wait until the little beebee was bathed and dressed!

In the meanwhile Oliver was nodding in his tree, waiting for the shikaree's signal. The old man was listening for the faintest sound. Not a quiver in the bush below escaped him; not the beat of a weary wing as the night-birds drew to their haunts; not a tremble in the grass at his feet, where the children of the day were awaking.

The wind changed with the daybreak, and the wary hunter changed his position with it. He swung himself from tree to tree, leaving no footprint on the ground that the keen scent of the wolf might detect. Avoiding the trees where the branches grew low to the ground, he stationed the boy at a far greater distance than before. Again they watched and waited. A few sharp, trotting steps went by, and a dhole sprang from the thicket.

"Bear," murmured Tara, as the creature turned aggressive, and dashing out with a rush upon the wild dog, charged him fiercely.

In the noise of their scuffle other sounds were lost. But the flap of the vulture's wing, the scream of the kite, and the hoarse gobble-gobble of the still more numerous turkey-buzzards grew more and more distinct as the red light of morning painted the eastern sky.

The sun arose, and the furry tyrants of the midnight fled before it. The tiger was slumbering in the moonje grass he loves so well; the spotted leopard chose out his favourite tree, uprising from the thickest underwood, and coiled himself up for his mid-day rest; the bear trotted off to his den behind the fallen rock; the spotted deer roamed freely; and the peacocks, with which the jungle abounded, spread their glorious tails in the sunlight.

Then Tara Ghur descended his tree, and signing to Oliver to follow, stealthily approached the pit.

The large leaves of the bauhinia creeper and the pranes tree, a kind of sycamore, with which he had carpeted the path of the wolf, had been trampled down and displaced. Some had altogether vanished. The old man's eyes were flashing with their steeliest blue as he felt success was sure.