As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

It dared not retreat, and, therefore in a wilder panic, clawed its way higher up the tree. The limbs continued to shake their leaves for another protracted moment. Then the beast found a place to halt above his head, and doubtless glared down upon the unknown peril which man supplies to all the brutes.

Grenville recovered his wits as best he might. He had no particular dread of the animal crouched somewhere in his neighborhood, but neither did he relish its presence. What effect the affair would have on the creature he had come there to engage he could not, of course, determine.

He bent to listen for sounds from the space below. Not the faintest suggestion of a moving or feeding animal could his focused senses detect. He thought perhaps the tiger might have smelled him or seen him in the tree. It occurred to him, also, the brute might be waiting for the catlike thief to descend and be slain at the kill.

But a far more likely supposition was that the tiger, having sniffed the taint of some beast without caste, now left on the meat that was sacred to himself, had disdained to touch it, and had gone away, to return to the place no more.

Ready to curse the despicable animal now sharing the tree's security with himself, Sidney was all but resigned to another long night, spent in vain and in utter discomfort, when once again a lapping sound came crisply to his attention.

His brute was at the feast!

With heart abruptly pounding and senses suddenly tense, Grenville leaned down, with his glowing brand, to complete his work for the night.

His hand felt blindly along the limb, to pick up the end of the fuse. But someway the place was lost. More eagerly then, and telling off each twig like a sign that blazed the trail, he explored the branch anew.

He found the fiber that had held the fuse—but the fuse itself was gone! The panic-stricken creature that had climbed the tree had clawed or broken it down!

A bitterer disappointment to Grenville could scarcely have been planned. He was sickened all through by disgust, and a sense of the utter uselessness of all he had striven to accomplish. With fire in hand, the bomb all laid, and the tiger actually present—he was helpless, after all!