among them coolheaded enough to reason out which trail he had likely
taken, and thus look for him by the ford. Likely they were already
huddled in their thatched huts, waiting till daylight.

Then he called in the darkness. A heavy body brushed through the
creepers, and stepping falsely, broke a twig. He thought at first that
it might be one of the villagers, coming to look for him. But at once
the step was silenced.

Warwick had a disturbing thought that the creature that had broken the
twig had not gone away, but was crouching down, in a curious manner,
in the deep shadows. Nahara had returned to her hunting.


IV

"Some time I, too, will be a hunter of tigers," Little Shikara told
his mother when the beaters began to circle through the bamboos. "To
carry a gun beside Warwick Sahib--and to be honoured in the circle
under the tree!"

But his mother hardly listened. She was quivering with fright. She had
seen the last part of the drama in front of the village; and she was
too frightened even to notice the curious imperturbability of her
little son. But there was no orderly retreat after Little Shikara had
heard the two reports of the rifle. At first there were only the
shouts of the beaters, singularly high-pitched, much running back and
forth in the shadows, and then a pell-mell scurry to the shelter of
the villages.