shelf-like upper apartment, on which Mînah had been wont to sit, when strangers
were about, during the short days of her virginity. This place, as is usual in most
Malay houses, hardly deserved to be dignified by being termed a room. It
consisted of a platform suspended from the roof in one corner of the house, and
among the dusty lumber with which it was covered Mat now cowered and
sought to hide himself.
A minute or two of sickening suspense followed the tiger's first unsuccessful
charge. But presently the howl broke forth again, quickened rapidly to the note
of the charge song, and once more the house trembled under the weight of the
great animal. This time the leap of Him of the Hairy Face had been of truer aim,
and a crash overhead, a shower of leaflets of thatch, and an ominous creaking of
the woodwork told the cowering people in the house that their enemy had
effected a landing on the roof.
The miserable thready cheer, which Che’ Sĕman exhorted his fellows to raise in
answer to the charge song of the tiger, died down in their throats. All looked
upwards in deadly fascination as the thatch was torn violently apart by the great
claws of their assailant. There were no firearms in the house, but the men
instinctively grasped their spears, and held them ready to await the tiger's
descent. Thus for a moment, as the quiet moonlight poured in through the gap in
the thatch, they stood gazing at the great square face, marked with its black bars,
at the flaming eyes, and the long cruel teeth framed in the hole which the claws
of the beast had made. The timbers of the roof bent and cracked anew under the
unwonted weight, and then, with the agility of a cat, He of the Hairy Face leaped
lightly down, and was in among them before they knew. The striped hide was
slightly wounded by the spears, but the shock of the brute's leap bore all who had
resisted it to the floor. The tiger never stayed to use its jaws. It sat up, much in
the attitude of a kitten which plays with something dangled before its eyes, and
the soft pit-pat of its paws, as it struck out rapidly and with unerring aim,
speedily disposed of all its enemies. Che’ Sĕman, with his two sons, Âwang and
Ngah, were the first to fall. Then Iang, Che’ Sĕman 's wife, reeled backwards
against the wall, with her skull crushed out of all resemblance to any human
member, by the awful strength of one of those well-aimed buffets from the
fearful claws. Kassim, Pôtek, and Äbdollah fell before the tiger in quick
succession, and Mînah, the girl who had nestled against her father for protection,
lay now under his dead body, sorely wounded, wild with terror, but still alive
and conscious. Mat, cowering on the shelf overhead, breathless with fear, and
gazing fascinated at the carnage going on within a few feet of him, was the only