Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/187

 the door, leaped easily to the ground, and betook himself to the jungle.

When the sun was up, an armed party of neigh- bours came to the house to see if aught could be done to aid its occupants. They found the place a sham- bles, the bodies hardly to be recognized, the floor- laths dripping blood, and Mat lying face-downward on the shelf, with his reason tottering in the balance. The corpses, though they had been horribly mutilated, had not been eaten, the tiger having contented himself with drinking the blood of his victims, and playing his ghastly game with them till daybreak interrupted him.

This is, I believe, the only well-authenticated in- stance of a tiger attacking men within their closed house in the heart of a Malayan village; and the circumstances are so remarkable in every way, that it is perhaps only natural that the natives of Pahang should attribute the fearlessness of mankind, and the lust of blood displayed by Him of the Hairy Face, to the fact that he was no ordinary wild beast, but a member of the human family who, by means of magic agencies, had assumed a tiger's shape, the better to prey upon his kind.