SAVED BY A JACKAL. A Story of India in the Time of the Great Rebellion of the Sepoys.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 99, 25 April 1885, Page 4

SAVED BY A JACKAL. A Story of India in the Time of the Great Rebellion of the Sepoys.

["Jackals are at once the bane and the blessing of India," said a gentleman whose face, either through a disorgani-ed liver or from a quarter of a century of steady curryeating under an Eastern sun, or in consequence of both, had acquired a rich yellow hue. " They banish sleep with their nightly howling, and sometimes they carry off a child, but they are the scavengers of the plains, which, I think, would hardly be habitable without them. Let me tell you a curious story about one of the brutes saving a child : " I had better state at once, to check undue sympathy, that the jackal, when he rescued Lai Chokroe, acted purely as an involuntary agent, for he certainly intended to eat her. The little girl's real name, given to her in England a year previously, was Mabel Stern. Her father, Col. Stern, whose regiment was in India, was on leave of absence in his native land when little Mabel was born, and three months later rumours of the coming mutiny in India began to be heard. Col. Stern was ordered to rejoin his command, and with his wife, who insisted on accompanying him, his infant daughter, and an ayah, or native nurse, obtained with some difficulty in London, he turned his face eastward. When he atepped ashore in Calcutta the country was in a flame of insurrection, and the Colonel learned that of his own regiment, composed of sepoys, recruited chiefly in the northwest, had been among the first to turn the arms they bad obtained and the arts they had learned from their English masters against their teachers. He was ordered to do general duty with the forces besieging Delhi, and, still accompanied by his wife and child, though the ayah rofused to go any further, he went up the country. "The last scenes of the mutiny were being played. Their horrors, and those that preceded them, are too well known to need description. Colonel Stern and his little family, with another ayah, were living in a bungalow, or Indian house, a few miles from Delhi, and keeping a careful watch at night time, for parties of disbanded mutineers were still prowling about, actuated by one prevailing purpose, to murder white men, women, and children -whenever they could do so with a fair chance of escapiug with their lives. The Colonel was an old Indian campaigner, and was apprehensive of an attack. It came at last in broad daylight, and when the master and wife were absent in the city for an hour, and nobody was in the bungalow except the ayah and child. When the Colonel and Mrs Stern returned, Mabel was gone, and the ayah, who seemed half distracted, told the story in her native tongue : " c They came, Mem-Sahib,' she said, excitedly addressing Mrs Stern, ' so quickly that I heard no noise until they were in the room. 'Where is the Sahib Logue?' said one of them. I told them the Colonel had gone out, and would not be back before night. They wanted to know where the Mem-Sahib was. I told them you were with him. * Great Allah !' said the leader, 1 nobody left to kill!' Then a dirty little fellow, who lives by robbery, and mutinied, but never fought, said : " There is still the chokro?." " Oh, Mem-Sahib ! I put my forehead to the ground to them. I said : * Kill me, but spare the chokreo.' At last they said I should not see the baby die. The leader asked what her name was, and I said Mabel Stern. " That will not do," said the man. "She must not meet Allah with such a name as that. The country is still red with blood. Let us call her La Chokra? (Red Girl). Then they took her away. Mrs Stern shrieked and rushed towards the door. The Colonel stopped her. " What will they do with' our baby?" he asked the ayah. The woman bo-wed her head sorrowfully. " Sahib," ?he said. " I knou them well. The leader will take her home and let her lie an hour with bis own little girl. I have seen her— a child a year o'd with a great scar on her forehead. This chi Id will thus get all the good fortune that might have come to yours had she lived. Then he will take her to the river, and leave her lying on a pillow on the shore until the tide rises. It will be full at nine o clock." "'There may be time yet,' said the Colonel, looking at his watch. ' Mabel, you must stay here. Ayah, do you know where the leader's bungalow is?' • ' ' Yes, Sahib, ' she said. I will show you. It is only half-a-mile away, and, perhaps, many men will not be there. Take your pistol, and come.' "The Colonel followed her, pistol in hand. But they had not gone a quarter of a mile before both stopped as they heard the noiso made by some animal approaching them. Then, under tho bright nioonlight, and only a few yards away, a great gaunt jackal passed them, going at a laboured trot, and carrying something heavy in his mouth. Both saw plainly what it was- a native child, with a great scar on it? forehead " The Colonel raised his pistol, and was about to fire at the brute, when the ayah stopped him with a hasty grasp on his aim •"Stay, Sahib,' she whispered, 'That is the leader's child. The jackal may have taken yours first, and then gone back for the other. Let us follow him. He i 3 not going fast,' "Acting on her advice, they followed until they saw the jackal stop and drop his' burden under a tree. The next moment he' 1 fled, snarling like a hunted cur, into the jungle, and the Colonel lifted his daughter, fast asleep and quito unharmed, from the side of the Hindoo baby just laid down! While Mabel had been transferring her fortunevS to the leader's child, and the family \ were waiting patiently at the rear of the bungalow for the completion of the operation, the jackal, coward and sneak thief of the wilderness, had carried off the white biby, and deferred his supper until he had returned for the black one. "A year afterward Col. Stern and his wife stood at the window of their home in Enprlan", smilingly watching two children on the grass below. One was Mabel Stern, and the other was a dusky little girl with a scar on her forehead, and a faithful and remarkably intelligent ayah was taking care of thorn both."