All such sublimity and active life, however, were now absent; not a living creature was to be seen, and actuated by some indefinable impulse, I involuntarily clutched my rifle. Scarcely had I done so, when an agonizing shriek re-echoed through the forest; rushing in the direction, I encountered a sight that struck me with horror and dismay--for a moment I stood paralyzed!
A Brahmin, with his wife and only daughter, were making a pilgrimage to the banks of the sacred Ganges. With the characteristic indifference of their caste, they had incautiously halted in the midst of the jungle to cook some rice. The little girl, while the mother was occupied in preparing the frugal meal, had thoughtlessly wandered into the long grass in quest of some gaudy insect flitting past: on a sudden the father, who had thrown himself on the ground to snatch a few moments' repose, was aroused by the screams of his child, and, regaining his feet, perceived a full-grown cheetah in the act of springing on his tender girl. To see, and rush to her rescue, armed only with a knife, was the work of an instant; he arrived too late to arrest the tiger as he made his rarely missing, and in this case fatal spring on the beautiful and dark-bosomed maid. A terrible struggle now ensued, the infuriated animal relaxed its grasp of the child, and fastened on the father. The tender and loving wife, only now fully awakened to the extent of the danger, forgetting her sex, insensible to aught but her husband's peril, recklessly rushed forward; but ere she could reach the spot to become a third victim to the insatiate monster, the providential flight of a bullet from a stranger's rifle, penetrating the animal's brain, stretched him dead at her feet. The brave husband, on approaching the spot, lay extended on the grass in the last agonies of death, dreadfully mangled, the brute having torn away the greater part of his brain and face. The little girl had already expired.
Never can I forget the calmness and apparently stoical indifference of this Indian woman while her husband lay extended before her, gasping his last. She supported his head, gently wiping the blood from his face and lips; no sign of her feelings could be detected in her features. I gazed upon her with astonishment; but no sooner was it evident that death had effectually terminated the loved one's sufferings, than she gave way to the most frantic and heart-rending expressions of grief. The anguish of that woman death alone can obliterate from my memory--words can not picture it. I see her before me as I write, alternately embracing the lifeless and bloody bodies of her husband and child, lavishing over them the most tender, endearing invocations of affection, then as suddenly turning round and seizing the crimson knife of her heroic husband, plunged it again and again into the body of the insensible animal, uttering all the time the most fearful and violent imprecations of despair and anguish.