The native snatched the rifle from the grasp of the good man, and pushed him back more violently than before.
"Back, back, sahib, or we are both lost!"
Mr. Hildreth now hurried to his friends, leaving the guide with his loaded gun in his hands.
All this took place in a few seconds. The animal stealing along the ground saw that his victim was retreating. With a growl, he rose on his legs, quickly trotted a few paces, and stopped on the "death line." Then he crouched, and, gathering his mighty muscles in one prodigious effort, rose in the air and shot toward the native.
This sight was the more terrible because of the gloom of the jungle. For one moment the fearful beast seemed suspended in mid air, and then he descended.
The parabola was mathematically exact, and, had the native stood still, the beast would have crushed him to the ground; but Luchman, with amazing agility, leaped backward nearly ten feet, firing the gun while the tiger was at the highest point. Such a beast, however, is rarely killed by a single shot; and, though the tiger was struck, he was not slain nor even disabled.
Luchman could have leaped among his panic stricken friends and diverted the assault from himself. No one knew this better than he, and yet no inducement in the world would have led him to do so. The gold was once more tried in the fire and found pure.
"Back, back! further back!" he fairly shouted, and, still facing the beast, drew his long knife for the desperate struggle. No man has ever met an enraged tiger and fought him with but a single knife and lived to tell of it. Luchman was well aware of that, but for the sake of those whom he loved he was ready to add another to the list of victims.
The ferocity of the beast was intensified by his failure to seize his prey at the first leap. His growl was sharper, probably caused by his wound, and drawing his feet under him with incredible quickness, he repeated the bound, when the native was no more than three yards away.
Luchman was not reckless enough to stand still, but he, too, made a leap to one side as well as backward. As he did it, he knew that his terrible foe could be baffled no longer.