“It is enough to give one the jumps, Richards; each time she yells I nearly fall off my branch.” “Keep on listening, then it won’t startle you.” “A fellow can’t keep on listening,” Wilson grumbled; “I listen each time until my ears begin to sing, and I feel stupid and sleepy, and then she goes off again like a steam whistle; that child will be black and blue all over in the morning.” A warning hiss from the shikari again induced Wilson to silence. “I don’t believe the brute is coming,” he whispered, an hour later. “If it wasn’t for this bough being so hard I should drop off to sleep; my eyes ache with staring at those bushes.” As he spoke the shikari touched him on the shoulder and pointed. “Tiger,” he whispered; and then did the same to Richards. Grasping their rifles, they gazed in the direction in which he pointed, but could for some time make out nothing. Then they saw a dim gray mass in front of the bushes, directly on the opposite side of the open space; then from the cage, lying almost in a direct line between it and them, rose the cry of the child. They were neither of them at all certain that the object at which they were gazing was the tiger. It seemed shapeless, the outline fading away in the bush; but they felt sure that they had noticed nothing like it in that direction before. For two or three minutes they remained in uncertainty, then the outline seemed to broaden, and it moved noiselessly. There could be no mistake now; the tiger had been attracted by the cries, and as it moved along they could see that it was making a circuit of the spot from whence the sounds proceeded, to reconnoiter before advancing towards its prey. It kept close to the line of bushes, and sometimes passed behind some of them. The shikari pressed their shoulders, and a low hiss enforced the necessity for absolute silence. The two young fellows almost held their breath; they had lost sight of the tiger now, but knew it must be approaching them. For two or three minutes they heard and saw nothing, then the shikari pointed beyond them, and they almost started as they saw the tiger retreating, and knew that it must have passed almost under them without their noticing it. At last it reached the spot at which they had first seen it. The child’s cry, but this time low and querulous, again rose. With quicker steps than before it moved on, but still not directly towards the center, to the great relief of the two subalterns, who had feared that it might attack from such a direction that they would not dare to fire for fear of hitting the cage. Fortunately it passed that point, and, crouching, moved towards the bushes.