l back to earth. The men
started to their feet, clutching their weapons convulsively, and, led by
Che' Seman, they raised, above the shrieks of the frightened women, a
lamentable attempt at a _sorak_, the Malayan war-cry, which is designed
as much to put heart into those who utter it, as to frighten the enemy
in defiance of whom it is sounded.

Mat, the man who had upset the torch and plunged the house in darkness,
alone failed to add his voice to the miserable cheer raised by his
fellows. Wild with fear of the beast without, he crept, unobserved by
the others, up into the _para_, or shelf-like upper apartment, on which
Minah had been wont to sit, when strangers were about, during the short
days of her virginity. This place, as is usual in most Malay houses,
hardly deserved to be dignified by being termed a room. It consisted of
a platform suspended from the roof in one corner of the house, and among
the dusty lumber with which it was covered Mat now cowered and sought to
hide himself.

A minute or two of sickening suspense followed the tiger's first
unsuccessful charge. But presently the howl broke forth again, quickened
rapidly to the note of the charge song, and once more the house trembled
under the weight of the great animal. This time the leap of Him of the
Hairy Face had been of truer aim, and a crash overhead, a shower of
leaflets of thatch, and an ominous creaking of the woodwork told the
cowering people in the house that their enemy had effected a landing on
the roof.

The miserable thready cheer, which Che' Seman exhorted his fellows to
raise in answer to the charge song of the tiger, died down in their
throats. All looked upwards in deadly fascination as the thatch was torn
violently apart by the great claws of their assailant. There were no
firearms in the house, but the men instinctively grasped their spears,
and held them ready to await the tiger's descent. Thus for a moment, as
the quiet moonlight poured in through the gap in the thatch, they stood
gazing at the great square face, marked with its black bars, at the
flaming eyes, and the long cruel teeth framed in the hole which the
claws of the beast had made. The timbers of the roof bent and cracked
anew under the unwonted weight, and then, with the agility of a cat, He
of the Hairy Face leaped lightly down, and was in among them before they
knew. The striped hide was slightly wounded by the spears, but the shock
of the brute's leap bore all who had