ned by his own comrades.

"Well, you've managed to shoot him, I see," said Van der Kemp as he
joined the group.

"Alas! no. I have not fired a shot," said Nigel, with a half
disappointed look.

"You's got de better ob him anyhow," remarked Moses as he pushed to the
front.

"The spear got the better of him, Moses."

"Veil now, zat is a splendid animal. Lat me see," said the professor,
pulling out his tape-measure.

It was with difficulty that the man of science made and noted his
measurements, for the people were pressing eagerly round the carcase to
gratify their revenge by running their spears into the still warm body.
They dipped the points in the blood and passed their krisses broadside
over the creature that they might absorb the courage and boldness which
were supposed to emanate from it! Then they skinned it, and pieces of
the heart and brain were eaten raw by some of those whose relatives had
been killed by tigers. Finally the skull was hacked to pieces for the
purpose of distributing the teeth, which are used by the natives as
charms.

CHAPTER XXI.

IN WHICH THE PROFESSOR DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF.

Leaving this village immediately after the slaying of the tiger, the
party continued to journey almost by forced marches, for not only was
Nigel Roy very anxious to keep tryst with his father, and to settle the
question of Kathleen's identity by bringing father and daughter
together, but Van der Kemp himself, strange to say, was filled with
intense and unaccountable anxiety to get back to his island home.

"I don't know how it is," he said to Nigel as they walked side by side
through the forest, followed by Moses and the professor, who had become
very friendly on the strength of a certain amount of vacant curiosity
displayed by the former in regard to scientific matters--"I don't know
how it is, but I feel an unusually strong desire to get back to my cave.
I have often been absent from home for long periods at a time, but have
never before experienced these strange longings. I say strange, because
there is no such thing as an effect without a cause."

"May not the cause be presentiment?" suggested Nigel, who, knowing what
a tremendous possibility for the hermit lay in the future, felt a little
inclined to be superstitious. It did not occur to him just then that an
equally, if not more, tremendous possibility lay in the future for
himself--touching his recent discovery or suspicion!

"I do not beli