As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

The boar staggered blindly, instinctively, back to the dense, concealing jungle.

Grenville heard it grunt once savagely, as it broke its way past interfering branches of the growth. He realized it was escaping, that it might reach a hole or other concealment before it fell, and cheat him of his dinner.

He dropped his bow, as a useless impediment in such a tangle, and plunged in a reckless manner through the shrubbery and vines where his quarry was no longer in sight.

The hog must have stumbled forward with considerable speed. A vibrating palm, ten feet ahead of his position, urged Sidney impulsively forward. He was baffled and retarded in a most exasperating fashion by the creepers woven through the thicket.

Obliged to make a slight detour, he smashed a path between two stout banana palms—and came upon a hidden clearing. There was one unexpectedly violent movement of the growth just opposite, and there he thought his hog was dying.

Instantly upon his startled vision impinged a blot of yellow color. The full active form of the tiger was immediately revealed, as the brute leaped forth and sank his teeth in the neck of the sinking boar.

There was one shrill mort cry only as the hog became inert. Half raising the limber form in his massive jaws, the while his eyes wildly blazed his challenge to and defiance of the man who had halted in the clearing, the great supple creature, with the studded gold band about his neck, slowly strode once more within the jungle.

With a horribly disquieting comprehension of the fact he had doubtless been stalked for the past half hour, which fully accounted for the absence of game along the trails, Grenville retreated from the place. Why he had not been leaped upon and instantly slain was too much to understand—unless the unknown beings who had placed a collar, like a badge of inferiority, upon the animal's neck, had so impressed him with a dread of man that he dared not make an attack.

All zest for the hunt had departed from his being when Sidney recovered his bow. Anger and exasperation took its place as he reflected on the ease with which this insolent, fearless beast could continue to rob him of his quarry. And one day, he knew, the animal's boldness would increase to a point where a treacherous leap would restore his undisputed mastery of all this bit of land.

"I'll kill him!" said Grenville, unexcitedly. "I'll blow him clean out of his skin!"