Hindu who was calling his meek-eyed bullocks hard names because they insisted
on lying down in the middle of the road for their noonday siesta.
Baboo’s father, Aboo Din, was a Hadji, for he had been to Mecca. When nothing
else could make Baboo forget the effects of the green durian he had eaten, Aboo
Din would take the child on his knees and sing to him of his trip to Mecca, in a
quaint, monotonous voice, full of sorrowful quavers. Baboo believed he himself
could have left Singapore any day and found Mecca in the dark.
We had been living some weeks in a government bungalow, fourteen miles from
Singapore, across the island that looks out on the Straits of Malacca. The fishing
and hunting were excellent. I had shot wild pig, deer, tapirs, and for some days
had been getting ready to track down a tiger that had been prowling in the jungle
about the bungalow.
But of a morning, as we lay lazily chatting in our long chairs behind the bamboo
chicks, the cries of “Harimau! Harimau!” and “Baboo” came up to us from the
servants’ quarters.
Aboo Din sprang over the railing of the veranda, and without stopping even to
touch the back of his hand to his forehead, cried,—
“Tuan Consul, tiger have eat chow dog and got Baboo!”
Then he rushed into the dining room, snatched up my Winchester and cartridge-
belt, and handed them to me with a “Lekas (quick)! Come!”
He sprang back off the veranda and ran to his quarters where the men were
arming themselves with ugly krises and heavy parangs.
I had not much hope of finding the tiger, much less of rescuing Baboo, dead or
alive. The jungle loomed up like an impassable wall on all three sides of the
compound, so dense, compact, and interwoven, that a bird could not fly through
it. Still I knew that my men, if they had the courage, could follow where the tiger
led, and could cut a path for me.
Aboo Din unloosed a half-dozen pariah dogs that we kept for wild pig, and led
them to the spot where the tiger had last lain. In an instant the entire pack sent up
a doleful howl and slunk back to their kennels.