The tiger dropped, striking me down the leg with one of his out-thrown paws; I thought my time had come. With a superhuman effort I chinned myself on the creeper, clutched the limb again, got an arm about it, reached a twig higher up and threw my leg fairly over. I was quickly in my old position again, blown, dizzy and wholly unable to believe the tiger had been evaded by such a clumsy scrambling. He was beating about in the trampled grass below, but his roar had grown hoarse and guttural; it seemed no longer so savage. Then I heard his breath blowing froth and bubbles-of-blood through his nostrils. My heart leaped exultantly—I knew an arrow had reached his lungs! CHAPTER XIV AN OLD ROUÉ In a time incredibly short I heard sounds growing fainter where the great brute stiffened out in the grass. The poison, I knew, had gotten in its work at last. When the final convulsion had shivered itself out, what a death-silence settled on the jungle! It seemed as if for miles about, the lesser beasts had held their breath and fled from that theatre of throes and roars of the master-murderer. The hush affected me deeply. I felt so alone with the dead, and yet not confident of my safety. My imagination pictured a ring of leopards, cats and other creatures stealing silently up, like the curious women who enjoy to look upon a corpse, these all half afraid that the king was not really lifeless after all. Probably no creature was then within half a mile of the spot, for the noise had been sufficient to frighten away even the snakes, it seemed to me, yet I never for a moment entertained a thought of climbing down from where I was. The wait, through the midnight and the long chilly hours of morning was the harder to bear because of the weakness I felt, after all the over-wrought emotions I had undergone. It was difficult, moreover, to cast off the dread of the still brute below me, not to mention the sounds which recommenced in the animal-haunted jungle. I was exhausted, for the strain had been as hard to bear as severe physical labour. In addition to this, I had performed a good day’s work, before I came to my tryst with the tiger. How long seemed the time since I left the friendly Links, on my quest of vengeance and retribution! I may have dozed, as I half lay against the woven creepers, and although it could not have been for long, dawn had come when I started awake. In the forest the shadows were still too deep to be fathomed, yet at last I made out the rigid form on the ground. My enemy was almost directly under the place where I was sitting. I could see no arrows at all; and my mind had pictured him bristling with the shafts.