"In a moment, sir," said I, "in a moment.... Well, I say I missed it by three feet, and many a friend of mine has missed things by a little minus, but the funny thing is that they never miss it by a little plus. Now, isn't that worth judging? I did indeed know one case...."
"I am determined you shall allow me," said my companion, becoming earnest.
"One moment," I pleaded, lifting my right hand slightly from the table. "I was once with a man who had to jump from an old piece of fortification on to the top of a wall about ten feet off, and if he jumped not far enough he fell into the soft ditch about five feet deep. But if he jumped too far he fell into an enormous fosse a hundred feet deep. And, by the Lord, he jumped exactly three inches too far! Poor devil!... Now, if this tigress of yours had only jumped just over your head you would have had her at a disadvantage. You could have changed your front with the rapidity familiar to men of your profession, organised a concentrated fire against her just as she was executing her turning movement, and got her behind the shoulder-blade. But...."
"There is no 'but,'" said he, with an impressive but rather dangerous solemnity. "I say that the tigress came to earth just in front of me and advanced upon me by one and by two. I had no time to reload and to fire. I was all alone. What did I do?"
"That is what I was waiting to hear," I said. "It seems to me the climax of the whole story. I trust that you seized its—or I should say her—upper jaw with your left hand, lower jaw with your right hand, and tore the head asunder. There is no quicker way with a tigress."
"You are wrong," said he.
"Did you not, then," said I, "suddenly fasten both hands upon its throat and, digging your thumbs conversely from right and from left upon its windpipe, strangle it to death? Such a manœuvre is a matter of moments, and he laughs best who laughs last."
"I did not," said he, in a rising anger.
At this moment the train began to slow down, and I knew the place it was approaching, for I am very familiar with the line. A porter who did not know me, but whom I secretly bribed, perceiving the danger of the circumstances, took my bag and made a great noise with it and asked a number of questions. Everybody got up, and the crowd of us began to jostle down the gangway of the eating-car. The Hero was at first just behind me, and was beginning to explain to me what exactly he did to the tigress when we were unfortunately separated by two commercial travellers, a professional singer, and a politician.
Fate dominates the lives of men, though Will is a corrective of Fate. Men in a restaurant-car are like the leaves that flutter from trees or like the particles of water in the eddying of a river. I drifted from him further and further still. When we came out upon the crowded platform I saw him, the Hero, waving his hand to me, desiring to re-establish with me human and communicable things and to tell me how he did at last destroy that mighty beast. But Fate, which is the master of human things, would not have it so, and Will, which is but a corrective of Fate for us poor humans, stood me in no stead. We drifted apart; we never met again. He was off perhaps to shoot (and miss) some other tigress (or, who knows, a tiger?) and I to another town where I might yet again wonder at the complexity of the world and the justice of God!