“Like the ideal Christian pilgrim, not looking right or left?”
The Sergeant seemed puzzled. He had not noticed anything pious about it. So I tried again.
[83] ]“Like a dog after game? Perhaps he was after something?”
“That’s it, that’s it. I’m sure he had sport in sight.”
“Preoccupied, so to speak?”
“Very much so. You know there are always cattle grazing on the far side of the range. He was hard at them. I just had time to shoot and no more. I noticed he would cross at 300 yards, and, doing everything as fast as I could, I lowered my sights, and aimed, and fired. He dropped, and never moved, and ... here he is....”
It had been a fine tiger, in the prime of life; and, as doctors say after a post-mortem, the corpse had all the appearance of having been extremely well nourished. Death was the result of a sudden failure of the heart’s action, due to violence.
The Sergeant-Instructor had scored a bull’s-eye.