Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/336

 as a delicious doll—so readily does female nature adapt itself to its appropriate channels!

Not less readily did Jim Slagg adapt himself to one of the peculiar channels of man's nature. Sport was one of Slagg's weaknesses, though he had enjoyed very little of it, poor fellow, in the course of his life. To shoot a lion, a tiger, or an elephant, was, in Slagg's estimation, the highest possible summit of earthly felicity. He was young, you see, at that time, and moderately foolish! But although he had often dreamed of such bliss, he had never before expected to be within reach of it. His knowledge of sport, moreover, was entirely theoretic. He knew indeed how to load a rifle and pull the trigger, but nothing more.

"You haven't got many tigers in these parts, I suppose?" he said to Flinn as they sauntered towards the house after seeing the electrical party off. He asked the question with hesitation, being impressed with a strange disbelief in tigers, except in a menagerie, and feeling nearly as much ashamed as if he had asked whether they kept elephants in the sugar-basin. To his relief Flinn did not laugh, but replied quite gravely—

"Och! yes, we 've got a few, but they don't often come nigh the house. We have to thravel a bit into the jungle, and camp out, whin we wants wan. I heard master say he 'd have a try at 'em to-morrow,