The tearing pulses down below ceased their beating; it was as if a great heart had stopped! The ship, breathless at her own escape, lay calm and quiet in the fog. The only sound was of the greasy waves lapping her high steel flanks. Yet---- Admiral Dorn, still standing beneath the bridge, with both hands grasping the rail, shivered and drew breath. What might have happened if----He looked forward. He imagined he could hear the crash, see the great bow sinking; he could hear the splintering of the bulk-heads, the screams of the people tumbling up the companionways, the panic and pandemonium, the mad rush for the boats, the horrid, slow subsidence. But it was not to be; the danger had gone by! Now he remembered having heard that first low whistle before the two that had signaled so plainly: "_I have my helm to starboard--passing to starboard of you!_" And yet, well did he know that no fires blazed in those dead furnaces, no steam was coming from that rusty, salt-incrusted funnel. It was as if the dead had spoken to warn the living! He shivered once more, and staggered to the bridge-ladder, holding on and listening. Three, four, five times did the _Caronia's_ siren wail out into the stillness. _No reply._ And then the throbbing pulses took up their beat again. Down in the corner of the main saloon, filled with chattering people, romping children, and game-playing young folk, who knew not what had passed on deck, sat the Silly Ass, the girl close to him. "I'll never tell," she whispered. "What is it you're thinking of?" The round eyes gazed into hers. "It's a long time since I did," he said. "Did what?" "Prayed! God made me a fool just to do this some day, I guess." His face showed the expression of a grown-up, sobered man. On the bridge, the captain and the other officers were talking in low, awe-struck tones. [Illustration] WAR ON THE TIGER BY W. G. FITZ-GERALD ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND FROM DRAWINGS BY FRANKLIN BOOTH The _patwari_ salaamed and laid a report on my desk--a thing of maps and figures that brought the sweat to my face. Fifty-seven killed, six hundred square miles of rich rice and sugar country demoralized, communications stopped, crops rotting on the ground, nine villages abandoned, and the shyest of jungle creatures grazing in the market-place! Tiger and tigress--a bad case. When I told a man once that tigers and cobras, between them, made away with 25,000 human beings in India every year, he thought I was joking. "Why," said he, "surely one fifth of the human race--325,000,000, at any rate--is packed into that triangle! Where can the tigers live?" But I underestimated it; there were just 24,938 killed in 1906 by tigers alone. You can see it yourself in the government records. Now, as District Officer, I'm the "father" of two million souls, and responsible for all things, from murder to measles. But this was beyond me. It was a Commissioner's job, backed by the Maharaja.