George Henty - The Lost Heir

"I am not surprised that you did not recognize me," the latter said; "I was but twenty-five then, and have been knocking about the world ever since, and have gone through some very rough times and done some very hard work. Of course you saw my name among the list of the passengers on board the Nepaul , which went down with, as was supposed, all hands in that tremendous storm in the Bay of Bengal. Happily, I escaped. I was washed overboard just as the wreck of the mainmast had been cut away. A wave carried me close to it; I climbed upon it and lashed myself to leeward of the top, which sheltered me a good deal. Five days later I was picked up insensible and was carried to Singapore. I was in hospital there for some weeks. When I quite recovered, being penniless, without references or friends, I shipped on board a vessel that was going on a trading voyage among the islands. I had come out to see the world, and thought that I might as well see it that way as another. It would take a long time to relate my after-adventures; suffice it that at last, after numerous wanderings, I became chief adviser of a powerful chief in Burmah, and finally have returned home, not exactly a rich man, but with enough to live upon in more than comfort for the rest of my life."

"How long have you been in London?"

"I have been here but a fortnight; I ran down home to see if I had relatives living, but found that an old lady was the sole survivor of my family. I need scarcely say that my first business on reaching London was to rig myself out in a presentable sort of way, and I may say that at present I feel very uncomfortable in these garments after being twenty years without putting on a black coat. I happened the other day to see your name among those who attended the levée , and I said to myself at once, 'I will call upon the General and see if he has any remembrances of me.'"

At this moment a servant entered the room with a little note.

"My Dear Uncle: It is very naughty of you to be so long. I am taking the carriage, and have told them to put the other horse into the brougham and bring it round for you at once."

For more than an hour the two men sat talking together, and Simcoe, on leaving, accepted a cordial invitation from the General to dinner on the following day.

"Well, uncle, who was it?" Hilda asked, when they met in the drawing room a few minutes before the dinner hour. "You said you would not be five minutes, and I waited for a quarter of an hour and then lost patience. I asked when I came in how long he had stayed, and heard that he did not leave until five o'clock."

"He was a man who had saved my life in India, child."

"Dear me! And have you never heard of him since, uncle?"

"No, dear. I did my best to find out his family, but had no idea of ever seeing the man himself, for the simple reason that I believed that he died twenty years ago. He had sailed in a vessel that was reported as lost with all hands, so you may well imagine my surprise when he told me who he was."

"Did you recognize him at once, uncle?"

"Not at first. Twenty years is a long time; and he was only about five-and-twenty when I knew him, and of course he has changed greatly. However, even before he told me who he was I was able to recall his face. He was a tall, active young fellow then, and I could certainly trace the likeness."

"I suppose he was in the army, uncle?"

"No; he was a young Englishman who was making a tour through India. I was in command at Benares at the time, and he brought me letters of introduction from a man who had come out in the same ship with him, and also from a friend of mine in Calcutta. A few days after he arrived I was on the point of going up with a party to do some tiger-shooting in the Terai, and I invited him to come with us. He was a pleasant fellow and soon made himself popular. He never said much about himself, but as far as I understood him he was not a rich man, but he was spending his money in seeing the world, with a sort of happy confidence that something would turn up when his money was gone.

"We were out a week and had fair sport. As you have often heard me say, I was passionately fond of big-game shooting, and I had had many narrow escapes in the course of my life, but I never had so narrow a one as happened to me on that occasion. We had wounded a tiger and had lost him. We had spent a couple of hours in beating the jungle, but without success, and had agreed that the brute could not have been hit as hard as we had believed, but must have made off altogether. We were within fifty yards of the edge of the jungle, when there was a sudden roar, and before I could use my rifle the tiger sprang. I was not in a howdah, but on a pad; and the tiger struck one of its forepaws on my knee. With the other he clung for a moment to the pad, and then we went down together. The brute seized me by the shoulder and sprang into the jungle again, carried me a dozen yards or so, and then lay down, still holding me by the shoulder.

"I was perfectly sensible, but felt somewhat dazed and stupid; I found myself vaguely thinking that he must, after all, have been very badly hit, and, instead of making off, had hid up within a short distance of the spot where we saw him. I was unable to move hand or foot, for he was lying on me, and his weight was pressing the life out of me. I know that I vaguely hoped I should die before he took a bite at my shoulder. I suppose that the whole thing did not last a minute, though to me it seemed an interminable time. Suddenly there was a rustling in the bush. With a deep growl the tiger loosed his hold of my shoulder, and, rising to his feet, faced half round. What happened after that I only know from hearsay.

"Simcoe, it seems, was riding in the howdah on an elephant behind mine. As the tiger sprang at my elephant he fired and hit the beast on the shoulder. It was that, no doubt, that caused its hold to relax, and brought us to the ground together. As the tiger sprang with me into the jungle Simcoe leaped down from the howdah and followed. He had only his empty rifle and a large hunting-knife. It was no easy work pushing his way through the jungle, but in a minute he came upon us. Clubbing his gun, he brought it down on the left side of the tiger's head before the brute, who was hampered by his broken shoulder, and weak from his previous wound, could spring. Had it not been that it was the right shoulder that was broken, the blow, heavy as it was, would have had little effect upon the brute; as it was, having no support on that side, it reeled half over and then, with a snarling growl, sprang upon its assailant. Simcoe partly leaped aside, and striking again with the barrel of his gun, – the butt had splintered with the first blow, – so far turned it aside that instead of receiving the blow direct, which would certainly have broken in his skull, it fell in a slanting direction on his left shoulder.

"The force was sufficient to knock him down, but, as he fell, he drew his knife. The tiger had leaped partly beyond him, so that he lay under its stomach, and it could not for the moment use either its teeth or claws. The pressure was terrible, but with his last remaining strength he drove the knife to the full length of its blade twice into the tiger's body. The animal rolled over for a moment, but there was still life in it, and it again sprang to its feet, when a couple of balls struck it in the head, and it fell dead. Three officers had slipped down from their howdahs when they saw Simcoe rushing into the jungle, and coming up just in time, they fired, and so finished the conflict.

"There was not much to choose between Simcoe and myself, though I had certainly got the worst of it. The flesh of his arm had been pretty well stripped off from the shoulder to the elbow; my shoulder had been broken, and the flesh torn by the brute's teeth, but as it had not shifted its hold from the time it first grasped me till it let go to face Simcoe, it was not so bad as it might have been. But the wound on the leg was more serious; its claws had struck just above the knee-cap and had completely torn it off. We were both insensible when we were lifted up and carried down to the camp. In a fortnight Simcoe was about; but it was some months before I could walk again, and, as you know, my right leg is still stiff. I had a very narrow escape of my life; fever set in, and when Simcoe went down country, a month after the affair, I was still lying between life and death, and never had an opportunity of thanking him for the manner in which, practically unarmed, he went in to face a wounded tiger in order to save my life. You may imagine, then, my regret when a month later we got the news that the Nepaul , in which he had sailed, had been lost with all hands."