United States or Guatemala ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Accordingly, as there was no tree of any kind close at hand, I had a staging erected some ten feet away from the body. This machan was about twelve feet high and was composed of four poles stuck into the ground and inclined towards each other at the top, where a plank was lashed to serve as a seat.
The voice was not Miss Quincey's voice; it was the monotonous, melancholy voice of the Fixed Idea. Her knowledge of him. After all, nothing could take from her the exquisite privacy of that possession. "Eros anikate machan," said Rhoda. Miss Quincey was gone and the Classical Mistress was in school again, coaching a backward student through the "Antigone." "Oh Love, unconquered in fight.
At sunrise the native hunter and I got down and examined the spot. While we were looking at the blood-marks a tremendous roar was heard close by, and my native shikari calling out, "Tiger! tiger! tiger!" bolted and ran off to the village as fast as his heels could carry him. I climbed back into the machan, to watch the development of events.
Desire: imeros. Eros. There was the chorus in the Antigone: "Eros anikate machan, Eros os en ktaemasi pipteis." There was Swinburne: "...swift and subtle and blind as a flame of fire, Before thee the laughter, behind thee the tears of desire." There was the song Minna Acroyd sang at the Sutcliffes' party. "Sigh-ing and sad for des-ire of the bee." How could anybody sing such a silly song?
After dinner, at dusk, as Mr Jukes was strolling round the house smoking a cigar, a man with a long spear came up to him, and began to turn him back with an earnest speech, of which the only word he understood was machan; but it was an important one, and the point of the whole oration, for it is the Javanese for tiger.
So they got permission for a mangled body to be left there, and built a machan near it. At sunset they took up their places and watched. At first the pair felt cheerful. A brilliant moon illuminated the whole country making everything as clear as day. But no tiger came.
If keen enough, one could sit all night on a machan in a tree near a recent "kill," on the chance of Stripes showing himself; but it never appealed to me much, that kind of sport. If a tiger was raiding the cattle I would poison the "kill" with strychnine.
"Tiger not coming to-night," he explained to the astonished Burman, who rejoined: "Tiger coming soon, soon, now; after the waning of the moon." "Oh well, never mind," said Shafto impatiently, "you take away the goat. Look sharp take him quickly, quickly and keep him." This was an extraordinary thakin, who, at the very climax of the tiger hour, climbed out of the machan and liberated the bait!
Here in the inner room was a high machan a huge bamboo shelf made like a raft and suspended from the roof and reached by a moveable ladder, used for storing all sorts of things. On this machan were some old blankets. "Here, conceal yourself in these" said the policeman. The Deputy Magistrate needed no second bidding.
Comrades in enterprise and fear, they sat gripping each other in the darkness, for the moon had now set. The villagers had heard the shot and at day-break came to the spot. They found the tiger lying dead at the foot of the hillock. The heroes could barely descend from the machan, so stiff and aching were their bones.
Word Of The Day