Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 15, 2025
Have they not been on gibbet bound, Their quarters flung to hawk and hound, And hold we here a cold debate To yield more victims to their fate? What! can the English leopard's mood Never be gorged with Northern blood? Was not the life of Athole shed To soothe the tyrant's sickened bed? Nor must his word, till dying day, Be nought but quarter, hang, and slay?"
The dense jungles of Bengal was the place of the leopard's resort, and the havoc which it committed among the cattle was prodigious. It was dreaded, far and near, on this account, by the natives, and they scrupulously avoided their spotted enemy, knowing well that when his appetite was whetted with hunger, he was not over scrupulous whether his victims were beasts or men.
She was not beautiful, "but fair and excellent," and of a character that exercises a commanding influence over the heart of man. Had he known her before habits of selfish indulgence had become, like the Ethiopian's skin and the leopard's spots, too deep and indelible for chemic art to change, she might perhaps have saved him from the transgressor's doom.
He wore over his coal-black locks a milk-white turban, and over his shoulders a short mantle of the same colour, open in front and at the sleeves, under which appeared a doublet of dressed leopard's skin reaching within a handbreadth of the knee. The rest of his muscular limbs, both legs and arms, were bare, excepting that he had sandals on his feet, and wore a collar and bracelets of silver.
It is supposed that upon the leopard's descent it was at once pinned to the ground, before it had time to make its spring. The noise of a tremendous struggle aroused the blacksmith, who, with a lantern in his hand, opened the cattle-shed door and discovered the cow in a frantic state of rage, butting and tossing some large object to and fro, which evidently had lost all power of resistance.
With them out of the way, it was a quick matter to dispose of the other fights, though not till after the white goat had been killed to satisfy that ancient grudge of the leopard's, and the wolf had been cruelly mauled for having refused to give up his pedestal to one of the excited lions.
Do you think that, because they have now enlisted through fear, they will ever change their natures?" I asked him "if soap would wash the black spots from a leopard's skin?" but I explained that I could strip the skin at once off the leopard, and should quickly change their natures. Day after day passed, and the ammunition was only returned in driblets, after constant and most urgent demands.
Trotting calmly into an open space, he stopped to take a survey of surrounding nature. Breakfast now naturally suggested itself. At least we may suppose so from a certain eager look which suddenly kindled in the leopard's eye, and a wrinkling of his nose as a bird flitted close over his head. At that moment a species of rabbit, or cony, chanced to hop round the corner of a rock.
Garman swayed like a broken tree, but despite it he smiled sardonically. "You had hoped I had changed?" His voice was little more than a painful whisper. Swaying drunkenly, almost falling, he drove himself on to speak. "That the leopard's spots had become whiter than snow? My dear Miss Fairclothe, people don't change like that. Behold yourself: even the jungle and sun, even I, couldn't change you.
When the fire had entirely died down, and I had satisfied myself that there was nothing left of poor Ama to be desecrated by fang of beast or beak of bird, I sorrowfully retired from the fatal spot, carrying the leopard's skin with me, and making my way with some difficulty to the place where the canoe lay concealed, sprang in and shoved off.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking