decided to be
frank with Little Shikara, trusting all to the courage of a child. "It
all depends on thee. Pull back the hammer with thy thumb."

Little Shikara obeyed. He drew it back until it clicked and did not,
as Warwick had feared, let it slip through his fingers back against
the breach. "Yes, Sahib," he whispered breathlessly. His little brave
heart seemed about to explode in his breast. But it was the test, and
he knew he must not waver in the sahib's eyes.

"It is Nahara, and thou art a man," Warwick said again. "And now thou
must wait until thou seest her eyes."

So they strained into the darkness; and in an instant more they saw
again the two circles of greenish, smouldering fire. They were quite
near now--Nahara was almost in leaping range.

"Thou wilt look through the little hole at the rear and then along the
barrel," Warwick ordered swiftly, "and thou must see the two eyes
along the little notch in front."

"I see, Sahib--and between the eyes," came the same breathless
whisper. The little brown body held quite still. Warwick could not
even feel it trembling against his own. For the moment, by virtue of
some strange prank of Shiv, the jungle-gods were giving their own
strength to this little brown son of theirs beside the ford.

"Thou wilt not jerk or move?"

"Nay, Sahib." And he spoke true. The world might break to pieces or
blink out, but he would not throw off his aim by any terror motions.
They could see the tiger's outline now--the lithe, low-hung body, the
tail that twitched up and down.

"Then pull the trigger," Warwick whispered.

The whole jungle world rocked and trembled from the violence of the
report.

When the villagers, aroused by the roar of the rifle and led by Khusru
and Puran and Little Shikara's father, rushed down with their
firebrands to the ford, their first thought was that they had come
only to the presence of the dead. Three human beings lay very still
beside the stream, and fifty feet in the shadows something else, that
obviously was _not_ a human being, lay very still, too. But they were
not to have any such horror story to tell their wives. Only one of the
three by the ford, Singhai, the gun-bearer, was even really
unconscious; Little Shikara, the rifle still held lovingly in his
arms, had gone into a half-faint from fear and nervous exhaustion, and
Warwick Sahib had merely closed his eyes to the darting light of the
firebrands. The only death that had occurred was t