"'And my little son mustn't be a coward.' . . .
"After that I understood I must keep silence and bear my tigers
alone.
"For years the thought of that tiger's immensity haunted my mind.
In my dreams I cowered before it a thousand times; in the dusk it
rarely failed me. On the landing on my way to bed there was a patch
of darkness beyond a chest that became a lurking horror for me, and
sometimes the door of my father's bedroom would stand open and there
was a long buff and crimson-striped shape, by day indeed an ottoman,
but by night--. Could an ottoman crouch and stir in the flicker of
a passing candle? Could an ottoman come after you noiselessly, and
so close that you could not even turn round upon it? No!"
5
When Benham was already seventeen and, as he supposed, hardened
against his fear of beasts, his friend Prothero gave him an account
of the killing of an old labouring man by a stallion which had
escaped out of its stable. The beast had careered across a field,
leapt a hedge and come upon its victim suddenly. He had run a few
paces and stopped, trying to defend his head with the horse rearing
over him.
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