leisurely for some ten seconds, and then deliberately lowered
his head, his chin dropped and drawn in, staring intently at the man.
The effect of this was to throw forward the round arch of his skull,
with two broad bands across it, while below the bands glared the
unwinking eyes; so that, head on, as he stood, he showed something
like a diabolically scowling pantomime-mask. It was a piece of natural
mesmerism that he had practised many times on his quarry, and though
Chinn was by no means a terrified heifer, he stood for a while, held
by the extraordinary oddity of the attack. The head--the body seemed to
have been packed away behind it--the ferocious, skull-like head, crept
nearer to the switching of an angry tail-tip in the grass. Left and
right the Bhils had scattered to let John Chinn subdue his own horse.

"My word!" he thought. "He's trying to frighten me!" and fired between
the saucer-like eyes, leaping aside upon the shot.

A big coughing mass, reeking of carrion, bounded past him up the hill,
and he followed discreetly. The tiger made no attempt to turn into the
jungle; he was hunting for sight and breath--nose up, mouth open, the
tremendous fore-legs scattering the gravel in spurts.

"Scuppered!" said John Chinn, watching the flight. "Now if he was a
partridge he'd tower. Lungs must be full of blood."

The brute had jerked himself over a boulder and fallen out of sight
the other side. John Chinn looked over with a ready barrel. But the
red trail led straight as an arrow even to his grandfather's tomb, and
there, among the smashed spirit-bottles and the fragments of the mud
image, the life left, with a flurry and a grunt.

"If my worthy ancestor could see that," said John Chinn, "he'd have been
proud of me. Eyes, lower jaw, and lungs. A very nice shot." He whistled
for Bukta as he drew the tape over the stiffening bulk.

"Ten--six--eight--by Jove! It's nearly eleven--call it eleven. Fore-arm,
twenty-four--five--seven and a half. A short tail, too: three feet one.
But what a skin! Oh, Bukta! Bukta! The men with the knives swiftly."

"Is he beyond question dead?" said an awe-stricken voice behind a rock.

"That was not the way I killed my first tiger," said Chinn. "I did not
think that Bukta would run. I had no second gun."

"It--it is the Clouded Tiger," said Bukta, un-heeding the taunt.

"He is dead."

Whether all the Bhils, vaccinated and unvaccinated, of the Satpuras had
lain by to see the kill,