whip Baboo?”
His voice dropped to a pathetic little quaver, and he put up his hands with an
appealing gesture; but his brown legs were drawn back ready to flee should
Aboo Din make one hostile move.
“Baboo,” I said, “you are a hero!”
Baboo opened his little black eyes, but did not dispute me.
“You shall go to Mecca when you grow up, and become a Hadji, and when you
come back the high kadi shall take you in the mosque and make a kateeb of
you,” said I. “Now put your forehead to the ground and thank the good Allah
that the kuching had eaten dog before he got you.”
Baboo did as he was told, but I think that in his heart he was more grateful that
for once he had evaded a whipping than for his remarkable escape. A little later
the punghulo came up with a half-dozen shikaris, or hunters, and a pack of
hunting dogs. The men skinned the mutilated carcass of the only “good tiger” I
met during my three years’ hunting in the jungles of this strange old peninsula.