toward a smear of pale light across the lawns.
"My sister, after her last season, came out to Judhpore where I was stationed. Awfully rum place, but she wanted to 'see India.' Then, shortly after she came, I got a long leave and we went to the hill country for a vacation with friends. We were there perhaps a month, or more, and were on our way to see the sights at the capital when we met a hunting-party at the hotel. They were agreeable English people—I'd met some of them before—and they urged us to join them.
"The tiger season was on. Every coolie was talking about the unusual number of tigers that year. Of course, you know a native wouldn't kill a Bengal tiger. He'd let said tiger chew him up first. That's just what the tiger does, eventually. Well, my sister thought a tiger hunt would be thrilling and I was a bit enthusiastic myself, so we made our preparations and joined the party.
"In the jungle country we saw a new India. One can never forget that jungle country, once he's seen it—and smelled it.
"We were in luck. I should say, the tigers were unlucky. The fourth day Marie begged to be allowed a gun. I never dreamed she'd have the courage to use it, much less even kill a cat.
"But toward evening that very day we heard a great cat pad-padding through the twigs and leaves that led to the stream near the ambush. The wind was right, so that the beast suspected nothing, but bent his big, tawny head to drink. There was a flash, a report, a waft of smoke, and the tiger reared and fell beside the water. My sister proudly held up her gun. She had shot a tiger.
"Natives helped us examine the huge beast. He was shot cleanly through the heart. There was scarcely a spatter of blood on his black and orange hide. Suddenly one of the natives cried out in dialect to the other, who sprang away from the tiger. Then he spoke hysterically to me, pointing at the dead tiger.
"'The lady-sahib has killed a tiger of the blue eye. It carries the soul of Ramayana. A thrice sacred tiger and with the curse on the one who kills it. Ai-ai-yah!'
"Then he began to weave to and fro, intoning the weird singsong of the ancient curse of Ramayana. It went like this: 'She will die slowly. Her body will be shriveled up like the grass in the time of the great drought. The Great Terror will steal upon her unawares, and she will have the Great Fear in her heart till her life is sucked away. Ai-ai-yah! It has been written.'
"We gathered around the fellow, all talking at once. He understood English, but we could not shake his reiteration of the curse that followed the killing of a tiger of the blue eye. We examined the beast again and again, of course. Its right eye was of a clear and beautiful blue, more like a human eye than the eye of a jungle beast."
The captain paused a moment, and the silence of the Indian night surged about the little bungalow. Carson looked out at the light far across the lawns.
"I've got to pinch myself to realize that you're sitting right there telling me things like that. Why, a fellow might dream a thing like that, but it hardly seems"
"There are a lot of things in India that don't seem true, but are true," interrupted the other. "Shall I go on?"
At Carson's assent his even voice took up the amazing story again.
"You know, we English are slow to believe such things. Marie, of all the party, showed the only signs of agitation. But we were so insistent that the whole thing was native superstition and the blue eye of the tiger a biological freak, that
