silence was
broken, and a cry, half human and half animal, but horribly ominous,
sounding at first faint and distant, speedily grew louder and louder.
Soon I heard footsteps, the footsteps of something running towards us
and covering the ground with huge, light strides. Nearer and nearer it
came, till, with a sudden spring, it burst into view--the giant reeds
and trolsees were dashed aside, and I saw standing in front of the
kulpa-tree a vertical column of crimson light of perhaps seven feet in
height and one or so in width. A column--only a column, though the
suggestion conveyed to me by the column was nasty--nasty with a
nastiness that baffles description. I looked at the native, and the
expression in his eyes and mouth assured me he saw more--a very great
deal more. For some seconds he only gasped; then, by degrees, the
rolling of his eyes and twitching of his lips ceased. He stretched out a
hand and made some sign on the ground. Then he produced a string of
beads, and after placing it over the scratchings he had made on the
soil, jerked out some strange incantation in a voice that thickened and
quivered with terror. I then saw a stream of red light steal from the
base of the column and dart like forked lightning to the beads, which
instantly shone a luminous red. The native now picked them up, and,
putting them round his neck, clapped the palms of his hands vigorously
together, uttering as he did so a succession of shrill cries, that
gradually became more and more animal in tone, and finally ended in a
roar that converted every particle of blood in my veins into ice. The
crimson colour now abruptly vanished--whither it went I know not--the
shade that had been veiling the jungle was dissipated, and in the burst
of brilliant moonlight that succeeded I saw, peering up at me, from the
spot where the native had lain, the yellow, glittering, malevolent eyes,
not of a man, but a tiger--a tiger thirsting for human blood. The shock
was so great that for a second or two I was paralysed, and could only
stare back at the thing in fascinated helplessness. Then a big bird
close at hand screeched, and some small quadruped flew past me
terrified; and with these awakenings of nature all my faculties revived,
and I simply jumped on my feet and--fled!

"Some fifty yards ahead of me, and showing their tops well above the
moon-kissed reeds and bushes, were two trees--a tamarind and a kulpa
briksha. God knows why I decided on the latter!