AN EVENTFUL RIDE IN SINGAPORE.

Evening Star, Issue 10872, 4 March 1899, Page 4

AN EVENTFUL RIDE IN SINGAPORE.

A correspondent to ' The "Field' (England) has forwarded the following letter to that journal:—"When reading my last number of 'The Field' (October 8). I came across a letter from a cyclist describing his recontre with a fox. Thinking that a somewhat similar ' unique experience' might interest some of your readers, I append an account of the following curious incident, which happened to me on the eve of Anril 19 last. Living five miles inland, one of my favorite evening runs is out to a police station, at the ninth mile on this, the Selita, road. Here I generally stop to have a yrrn with the policemen, who, being Malays, have frequently something interesting to report in the way of jungle news. On the evening in question I was somewhat later than usual, and did not leave on my return journey until past 6 p.m. In the tropics there is little or no twilight • darkness shuts down on us by 6.30 p.m. The short period between sunset and dark is most appreciable, owing to the fresh coolness of the air, particularly out in the country districts, where the foliage is so dense and radiates off the heat rapidly, condensation following, and the air soon becoming delightfully cool and even chilly, as the thermometer falls some lOdeg of a night. I had a pleasant run along the all but deserted country road, as the Natives do not care to knock about much after dark, so I had not stopped to light my lamp. I had on a grey Viyella suit, and rode an ivory enamelled Rover, so was quite an apparition in grey in the duskv light, and was coasting down the short hill five and a-half miles out, when in the gloom I became aware of a yellow object on the bank of the roadside, between me and a thick overgrowth of bamboos. A long body and yellow head made tha greatest impression on my vision at the time. Thinking that it was a Chinaman, stripped to the waist, fossicking for something in a ditch, although at the moment it struck me as being odd when so dark, I should have continued on my run home, had not the object, as I shot past, crouched low alone the bank All this, of course, happened in a few seconds. It was too dark to distinguish anything, although only some five paces distant. Still thinking that it was a Chinaman up to some mischief, possibly waylaying somebody, I pulled up sharp, I jumped off, and was back at the spot almost immediately, in time to hear a large object breaking away in bounds through the bamboo scrub and undergrowth beyond the bank. There was no roadside ditch, so that all I saw was above ground, and could not have j been a Chinaman anyhow. I am by „no means of an imaginative disposition, but ' must acknowledge that my first fefclihg of

surprise gave way to a queer, I might even pay Tvierd.. sort of ( misafcien. The whqje thing struck me as so "odd that I was tin' satisfied until I had ridden back the following morning to search for any tracks. There were, however, none that I could see, for the grass was too thick and too heavily ] covered with dew, and on breaking through the bamboo scrub I found myself over my ankles in a swampy patch of thick undergrowth, where it was, of course, impossible to trace anything. This swamp, I found, led up to a large belt of original jungle, only a short distance up the ravine, and is, I have subsequently been tol I our local shikari, one of the crossings, well known to his trackers (Tamils, Madras), which tigers take when making from one jungle to another; and, by a strange coincidence, two mornings afterwards I had a telephonic message asking me to allow some trackers to make use of my telephone in the event of their coming across a tiger, on whose tracks they were in this district. I may add that in these days of swift, noiseless bicycles one may be on the lookout for surprises when making tracks through jungly districts. Wild pig I have, on two occasions, had dashed across the road in front of my cycle, but I have not to my knowledge at any time been such a surprise to a tiger. Of course, had I not been without a light and an apparition in the grey, coasting noiselessly, there would not have been the yellow object anywhere my side of the bamboo thicket.—Dare, ' The Lake,' Singapore."