Music nor words, dear reader, can stand me in any stead to convey the sound to you; the first note like the trumpet of a peacock, and the rest the deepest toned thunder. Stones and gravel rattled just behind the hut on the path by which we came and went, and a heavy stey passed and descended the slope into the nullah. I heard the sand crunching under his weight before I dared look. A little peep. Oh, heavens! looming in the moonlight, there he stood, long, sleek as satin, and lashing his tail--he stood stationary, smelling the slaughtered cow. No longer the cautious, creeping tiger, I felt how awful a brute he was to offend. I remembered how he had worried a strong cow in half a minute, and that with his weight alone my poor rickety little citadel would fall to pieces. As if the excitement of the moment was insufficient, the monster, gazing down the dry watercourse, caught sight of his companion, who, advancing up the bed of the nullah, stood irresolutely about twenty yards off. A terrific growl from him, answered not loud but deeply, and I was the strange and unsuspected witness to a catawauling which defies description--a monstrous burlesque on those concerts of tigers in miniature which are occasionally got up, on a cold, clear night, in some of the squares in London, when all the cats for half a mile around get by some queer accident into one area. Whether it is an axiom among tigers that possession is nine points of the law, or the other monster was the weaker vessel, I know not, but I soon perceived that as _my_ friend made more noise, the other became more subdued, and finally left the field, and retired growling among the bushes. The bully, who was evidently the male, after smelling at the head, came round the carcass, making a sort of complacent purring--"humming a kind of animal song," and to it he went tooth and nail. As he stood with his two fore feet on the haunch, while he tugged and tore out a beef-steak, I once more grasped old "Sam Nock," and ran the muzzle out of the little port. The white linen band marked a line behind his shoulders, and rather low, but, from the continued motion of his body, it was some moments before eye and finger agreed to pull trigger--bang! A shower of sand rattled on the dry leaves, and a roar of rage and pain satisfied me, even before the white smoke which hung in the still air had cleared away, to show the huge monster writhing and plunging where he had fallen. Either directed by the fire, or by some slight noise made in the agitation of the moment, he saw me, and with a hideous yell, scrambled up: the roaring thunder of his voice filled the valley, and the echoes among the hills answered it, with the hootings of tribes of monkeys, who, scared out of sleep, sought the highest branches, at the sound of the well-known voice of the tyrant of the jungle. I immediately perceived, to my great joy, that his hind-quarters were paralyzed and useless, and that all danger was out of the question.