d Gunga nor the other men would say a word until he spoke. They
were waiting--he knew they were--for a word, or a sign, or an order
(he did not know which), on which would hang the future of all three of
them.

Yet there was no hurry--no earthly hurry. He felt sure of it. In
the silence and the blackness--in the tense, steamy atmosphere of
expectancy--he felt perfectly at ease, although he knew, too, that there
was superstition to be reckoned with--and that is something which a
white man finds hard to weigh and cope with, as a rule.

The sweat ran down his face in little streams a the prickly heat began
to move across his skin, like a fiery-footed centiped beneath his
undershirt, but he noticed, neither. He began to be unconscious anything
except the knowledge that the bones of his grandsire lay underneath
him and that Mahommed Gunga waited for the word that would fit into the
scheme and solve a problem.

"Are there any tigers here now?" he asked presently, in a perfectly
normal voice. He spoke as he had done when his servant asked him which
suit he would wear.

"Ha, sahib! Many."

"Man-eaters, by any chance?"

Mahommed Gunga and the other man exchanged quick glances, but Cunningham
did not look up. He did not see the quick-flashed whites as their eyes
met and looked down again.

"There is one, sahib--so say the kansamah and the head man--a full-grown
tiger, in his prime."

"I will shoot him." Four words, said quietly--not "Do you think," or "I
would like to," or "Perhaps." They were perfectly definite and without a
trace of excitement; yet this man had never seen a tiger.

"Very good, sahib." That, too, was spoken in a level voice, but Mahommed
Gunga's eyes and the other man's met once again above his head.

"We will stay here four days; by the third day there will be time enough
to have brought an elephant and--"

"I will go on foot," said Cunningham, quite quietly. "Tomorrow, at dawn,
risaldar-sahib. Will you be good enough to make arrangements? All we
need to know is where he is and how to get there--will you attend to
that?"

"Ha, sahib."

"Thanks. I wonder if my supper's ready."

He turned and walked away, with a little salute-like movement of his
hand that was reminiscent of his father. The two Rajputs watched him
in heavy-breathing silence until the little group of lights, where the
horse-tents faced the old dak-bungalow, swallowed him. Then:

"He is good. He will do!" said the black-beard wh