The word simultaneously escaped the three men as they and Edna Talbot raised their rifles.
Leonie was walking across the space, neither hastening nor hesitating, towards the tiger which crouched, growling softly, with its tail sweeping the ground.
Did she hypnotise the brute, or did her supreme courage build an invisible barrier between the two?
Who knows!
Anyway she calmly approached within five yards, raised her rifle, took deliberate aim, and fired just as, with a hoarse-coughing roar, the tiger sprang.
There was the dull thud of a bullet, a snarl, and the animal fell back across the boy's body, twitching convulsively.
Without one moment's hesitation, while the rest of the party stood helpless owing to her position, Leonie, letting fall her rifle and drawing her revolver, walked right up to the writhing brute and fired straight into the terrible mouth.
With one supreme effort the tiger reared itself on its hind legs, gave a choking, strangled cough ending in a spurt of blood and froth which drenched Leonie, and fell back dead; and the entire native staff, shouting in wonder and joy, tore across the clearing and prostrated themselves, in grateful layers around the girl's heavily booted feet.
CHAPTER XXXI
"For her house inclineth unto death!"—The Bible.