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They do say the ghost of Chinna Tumbe walks, that always at midnight, when the Indian nightingale fills the Baboo's banian topes with her lugubrious song, and the weird ulus hoot from the peepul tops, a child, girt with silver bells, and followed by a Persian kitten and a mungooz, shakes the Baboo's gate, blows upon a silver whistle, and cries, so piteously, "Ayah! Ayah!"
She could not give him clothes, or ornaments, or toys: such was not the fashion of Baboo's race. Neither was he old enough to wear the silk sarong that his Aunt Fatima had woven for him on her loom. Baboo had been well trained, and however lordly he might be in the quarters, he was marked in his respect to the mistress.
I slowly cocked my revolver, doubting my senses, for each time one of the invaders reached the deck he sprang into the air with the long, thrilling cry of pain that had awakened me, and with another bound was on the bulwarks and over the side of the launch, clinging to the railing. With each cry, Baboo's mocking voice came out, shrill and exultant, from behind a pile of life-preservers.
We followed Baboo's lead to the edge of the jungle, and there, stretched out in the hot sand, lay the great, tawny beast, stamped and pawed until he was almost unrecognizable. All about him were the hoof-marks of the great sladang, the fiercest and wildest animal of the peninsula the Malayan bull that will charge a tiger, a black lion, a boa, and even a crocodile, on sight.
Away fly kitten and mungooz, away from the gate, away from the Baboo's walks, bright with ixoras and creeping nagatallis, away from the Baboo's park, shady with banians, and fragrant with sandal-trees, and imposing with tall peepuls, and cool with sparkling fountains, away from the Baboo's home, away from the Baboo's heart, bereft thenceforth forever!
If she wishes to pay a visit to her mother, she is carried to her shut up in a palanquin. I also saw the Baboo's wife and one of his sisters-in-law. The former was twenty-five years old and very corpulent, the latter was fifteen and was slim and well made.
Coppinger," Father Hogan resumed, "I'm told only told, mind you that the Major had Mount Music and the demesne advertised on the English papers " "Good God!" exclaimed Larry, startled out of his sulk; "to sell?" Father David, like other gentlemen of his age and cloth, had the Baboo's predilection for a well-worn quotation. "As to that I cannot say," he said portentously.
I slept but indifferently; I missed the cooling swish of the punkah, and all through my dreams the crackle and breaking of glass seemed to mingle with the insistent buzz of the tiger-gnats. Baboo's diminutive form kept flitting between me and the fireflies.
As before, a shriek of agony heralded the descent, followed by Baboo's laugh, then the dim shape sprang wildly upon the bulwark, lost its hold, and went over with a great splash among the labyrinth of snakelike mangrove roots. There was the rushing of many heavy forms through the red mud, a snapping of great jaws, and there was no mistaking the almost mortal cry that arose from out the darkness.
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.