s———.” Every one who has been in India will understand me; and he who does not understand me gains by it if I spare him the explanation of a coarse expression.
Yet Saïdjah did not mean anything bad. He only said it because he had often heard it said by others when they were dissatisfied with their buffaloes. But it was useless; his buffalo did not move an inch. He shook his head, as if to throw off the yoke, the breath appeared out of his nostrils, he blew, trembled, there was anguish in his blue eye, and the upper lip was curled upwards, so that the gums were bare. . . .
“Fly! Fly!” Adinda’s brothers cried, “fly, Saïdjah! there is a tiger!”
And they all unyoked the buffaloes, and throwing themselves on their broad backs, galloped away through sawahs, galangans,[1] mud, brushwood, forest, and allang-allang,[2] along fields and roads, and when they tore panting and dripping with perspiration into the village of Badoer, Saïdjah was not with them.
For when he had freed his buffalo from the yoke, and had mounted him as the others had done to fly, an unexpected jump made him lose his seat and fall to the earth. The tiger was very near. . . . Saïdjah’s buffalo, driven on by his own speed, jumped a few paces past the spot where his little master awaited death. But through his speed alone,
