They lowered, as though their owner gathered up his weight to spring.

He fired between them.

The flash and the smoke blinded him; the burst of the discharge within four echoing walls deadened his cars, and he was aware of nothing but a voice beside him that said quietly: "Well done, bahadur! Thou art thy father's son!" He dropped his rifle butt to the floor, and some one struck a light.
Even then it was thirty seconds before his strained eyes grew accustomed to the flare and he could see the tiger at his feet, less than a yard away--dead, bleeding, wide-eyed, obviously taken by surprise and shot as he prepared to spring.

Beside him, within a yard, Mahommed Gunga stood, with a drawn sabre in his right hand and a pistol in his left, and there were three other men standing like statues by the walls.
"How long have you been here ?" demanded Cunningham.
"A half-hour, sahib." "Why ?" "In case of need, sahib.

That tiger killed a woman yesterday at dawn and was driven off his kill; he was not likely to be an easy mark for an untried hunter." "Why did you enter without knocking ?" The ex-risaldar said nothing.
"I see that you have shoes on." "The scorpions, sahib--" "Would you be pleased, Mahommed Gunga, if I entered your house with my hat on and without knocking or without permission ?" "Sahib, I--" "Be good enough to have that brute's carcass dragged out and skinned, and--ah--leave me to sleep, will you ?" Mahommed Gunga bowed, and growled an order; another man passed the order on, and the tom-tom thundering began again as a dozen villagers pattered in to take away the tiger.
"Tell them, please," commanded Cunningham, "that that racket is to cease.