Chapter 2 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!

Aware of the danger of facing such a formidable charge, both gentlemen wheeled round, and prepared to fire if necessary. The major was inwardly groaning for the boar-spear that was standing idle in the corner of his bungalow. He looked up, and perceived the party of travellers coming along one of the narrow paths which divided the rice-fields, just in front of the bristling array of fiery eyes and curling tails. He saw a lady's dandy-that is, a kind of canoe-shaped seat with a canopy-carried on two men's shoulders. There it was in the line of the angry pigs. The danger to the unwary occupants was imminent. The little cavalcade had halted in dismay. The major thought of the naked legs of the bearers, who wore nothing but their white calico waist-cloths and cotton turbans, and galloped to the rescue, firing as he rode, to make the old boar change his course.

The weary bearers shrank back in terror, raising a wild howl for assistance, when a small lad, who was riding a little pony in the rear, pressed forward through the standing rice which had hitherto concealed him, and planted himself in the front of his companions, with no better defence than a huge bough he had broken from the nearest tree.

"Well done, my young hero!" cried the major as he rode up to them and waited; for dandy and bearers had retreated behind the screen which the green ears afforded, and safety was best secured by silence. The furious boar came on, foaming and champing his enormous tusks; but the well-timed shots urged him forward. He crossed the path of the travellers within a dozen yards of the hole into which the boy had pushed them, with nothing but the growing rice-straw for a shelter. The stampede of the pigs passed over. The boy still stood sentinel behind his bough.

"Trying the trick of Dunsinane," said the major, with a laugh he intended to prove reassuring to the unseen occupant of the dandy.

"Well content if they do take me for a young mango sapling," answered the little stranger, in the shy, blunt tones of an English school-boy. His broad sun-hat hid every bit of his face except the firm-set white lips. The major had seen enough. He dismounted, and assisted in lifting the dandy out of the rice. The blades were higher than his head, and the ground was more than muddy, for the field was undergoing its morning irrigation from the nearest tank.

"Tie-tara! tie-tara!" cried the black partridges they had unceremoniously disturbed. The birds, with a tameness which astonished the young travellers, fluttered about among the rice-stalks, pecking at the curtains of the dandy.

"Oliver, Oliver! where are you?" entreated a girlish voice from within.

"Safe, my dear young lady, quite safe," reiterated the major. "Let me ask if you were intending to change coolies at Noak-holly," pointing as he spoke in the direction of the village nearest to the indigo factory. "You had better join forces with us, as we were the unfortunate cause of your alarm, having dislodged those pigs whilst searching for a lost child."

"A lost child!" re-echoed the voice within. "Oliver, Oliver, can we help to find it?"

At that moment a great shout of triumph arose around the grass clump, and with one accord the little party pressed forward to ascertain its cause.

The sharp report of a gun sent the major spurring in advance. Had his friend forgot his caution? How had he dared to fire?

Another moment and he saw Mr. Desborough wheel round, raise himself slightly in his stirrups, and discharge his second barrel at a dusky speck emerging from the tufted grass. The tall blades swayed and quivered with the report. There was a smothered shuffling sound, a heavy thud upon the ground, a rustling in the quivering grasses. The native grooms ran forward eagerly, and dragged out the body of a satiated wolf.

"A cool shot, Desborough," observed the major.

"It may save another parent such a pang as mine, but it cannot give me back my child," groaned Mr. Desborough.