Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1893 — THE JHOTT DEMON. [ARTICLE]

THE JHOTT DEMON.

The Death of a Blind Tiger who had a Monkey for a Guide. The great Jhoot demon described by Col. Downing in his narrative of adventures in India was a tiger whose ways were as mysterious as his ravages were terrible. He could never be bagged. He killed every shikari, native or EuroEean, who tried it. This truculent beast ad never even been seen, and as he never mangled a body, but only suoked the blood through an orifice made over the jugular vein, the terror the great Jhoot demon inspired is not surprising. He never forced a door, yet he got into house after house. Two subalterns went out for him. and the next day were found dead like the rest.

One with his last strength had man aged to scratch the words; “Look out foraL .” But no amount of conjecture could solve the riddle of these words. A famous shot, who once for a wager shot 100 tigers in twelve months, met the same fate. He, too, left a “creepy” and mysterious message the letters “A. M.” Then the Colonel goes. He built himself an ambush and watched. “Just as the full light of the moon fell upon the stream and illuminated the surroundings there was an almost inaudible rustle of leaves close behind me, and, turning on the instant, I saw a little gray-brown paw very cautiously putting aside the twigs of my shelter, and behind the paw I could discern two small green eyes attentively regarding me. “‘A lungoor,’ I said to myself, as it vanished from view—a monkey. ‘That’s what the lads and’Dick Culverton meant to tell us, and, by George 1 there’s mischief here. Moved by a sudden inspiration, for whioh I cannot to this day account, I hastened from the shelter and ascended the adjoining tree. I had scarcely time to seat myself comfortably upon one of the lower branches when I saw the lungoor returning, followed by the most repulsive looking monster my eyes have ever beheld. “You talk, Snapper, of your tiger being mangy; this one was absolutely naked, nude as a nut, bald as a bottle, not a hair anywhere—a huge, ghastly, glabrous monstrosity—a very Caliban of tigers, as big as a bison, and as long as a crooodile. *

As the ghastlv creature crept after the monkey he followed the slightest curve and deviation of his guide with the delicate alacrity of a needle under the influence of a magnet. The adroitness displayed by the tiger was suddenly converted into a subject ofj/horrified wonder, for as the brute approached the ambußh he turned his hideous face up to the moon, and I could see that his eyes were of a dull, dead white, without light, intelligence, or movement. Tho creature was stone blind. For all that, he evidently knew, or thought he knew, what lay before him, for the saliva of anticipation was clinging to his wrinkled jaws like a mnss of gleaming icicles. “ The monkey, when he had come within jumping distance, gave a low sinnal cry, made one vigorous spring into my late shelter, alighted upon my camp stool and sprang out again on the other side. He was instantly followed by the tiger, who fell like an avalanche upon the stool, crushing it to match wood, and at onoe began to feel about on all sides for his expected victim. “Now was my chanoe. Beneath me in the broad light of the full moon lay the demon of the Jhoot. I aimed steadily at a deep furrow between the shoulder blades and held my breath for the shot. At that moment the keen eyes of the monkey caught sight of me, and the little animal uttered a shrill note of warning; but it was too late; my finger was upon the trigger, and I fired both barrels Id quick succession.—[London Truth.