These were the first words Bob heard when he came to himself. He was surrounded by a group of Korean soldiers, about whom there was nothing martial but the blood-red band in their hats. In the centre, just alighted from a palanquin, was a Korean in long white cloak and a hat like an inverted flower-pot; he was bowing and smiling with a mingled expression of amiability and concern. Bob recognized him in a moment; it was Mr. Helping-to-decide.
"Thank you, I'm rather shaky," said Bob looking round. "What has become of that brute?"
"Outside, sir. You stop horses; you stop tigers too. You kill him stone dead, sir."
"Did I really? The last I remember is an uneasy idea that the tiger was going to kill me. D'you mind giving me your hand. I feel rather giddy and battered."
With Mr. Helping-to-decide's eager assistance he rose to his feet and staggered out of the hut. There lay the tiger, a fine animal nearly twelve feet long. Beside it was the horse, whose skull had been broken by a single blow from the tiger's massive paw.
"I wonder I escaped," said Bob.
"A good, a famous shot, sir," said the Korean; "but you have a scratch, an abrasion, on your nob just where your hair begins."
"Have I? I am lucky it is no worse. But how is it I have the pleasure of seeing you here, sir?"
Then Mr. Helping-to-decide explained that he was on the way to his country house some fifteen miles distant. He had been sent by his government to watch the Russians at Seng-cheng, and had gone into the town with the full determination to let nothing escape his attention. But the Russians objected to being watched. They peremptorily ordered him out of their lines, and compelled him to disband his troops, allowing him to retain only the small escort which Bob saw with him. He was following his wife and family, who had preceded him along the road, when the sound of a shot had arrested his progress, and on searching he had found the tiger in the throes of death, and underneath it the inanimate form of the man to whom he owed eternal gratitude. If only he had been a little earlier he might have killed the tiger before it made its spring, and so have saved his honourable benefactor the bruises he was sure he bore on his body and the cut he saw on his head. Still, he hoped that he might some day have an opportunity of doing something in return for the Englishman's condescending kindness.
It was now several years since Mr. Helping-to-decide had eaten his dinners at Lincoln's Inn, but he spoke with extreme volubility, and was seldom at a loss for a word. Law lecturers, London landladies, leader-writers and cabmen had all assisted to form his style.