Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/182

 Again the long-drawn moan broke upon the still- ness. The water-buffaloes in the byre heard it, and were panic-stricken. Mad with fear they charged the walls of their pen, bearing all before them, and a moment later could be heard plunging wildly through the brushwood and splashing through the soft mud of the púdi-fields, the noise of their stampede growing fainter and fainter with distance. The lean eurs, suddenly awakened, whimpered miserably and scampered off in every direction, while the sleepy fowls, beneath the flooring of the house, set up a drowsy and discordant screeching. The folk within were too terror-stricken lo speak; for extremity of fear, which lends voices to the animal world, renders voluble human beings dumb. And all this while the cry of the tiger broke out again and again, ever louder and louder, as He of the Hairy Face drew nearer and yet more near.

At last it sounded within the very compound in which the house stood, and its sudden proximity caused Mat to start so violently that he overturned with his elbow the pitch-torch at his side, and ex- tinguished the flickering light. The women, their teeth chattering like castanets, crowded up against the nten, seeking comfort in physical contact with them. The men gripped their spears, and squatted Irembling in the half-light cast by the dying embers of the fire, and by the flecks cast upon floor and wall by the moonbeams struggling through the interstices of the wattling and the thatch of the roof.

"Fear not, Minah," Che' Seman whispered, in a