I underwent a trying ordeal for half an hour. While I was watching below, straining my eyes to pierce the gloom, slightly bending the bow and holding the poisoned arrow in readiness, the tiger shifted about in his feeding. Abruptly I saw a patch of his hide, a small irregular target, full in the light of the moon, where a ray shone down through some open shaft between leaves and branches. I could see a dark stripe across the dusty-looking hide. Even the play of a muscle was visible.
Doubtless the thrill and ardour of the hunter came to my rescue in that vital second. I only know that I was eager, steadied, released from all that had made me nerveless and cold. I even forgot what a deadly brute he was and what he might be capable of doing, if only slightly wounded.
The bow became vertical in my fist, at the end of my arm, now as rigid as oak. I drew the arrow backward to my ear with a strong, confident pull. Then the point came down, toward the lighted patch. I aimed as one aims at the head of a nail with a hammer—with no need to see my shaft. Then it sprang away like a flash, the twang resounded in my ear, and I saw a streak stab straight in the middle of the target.
Instantly a furious lunge and a roar that all but shook me down made the place terrible. I clutched another of the arrows, and fumbled it, so that it fell. Another then I got upon the string. All the while a most awful uproar was continued below. The arrow that had dropped betrayed my presence. The tiger leaped toward the branch, fell short, leaped again, thrashed in the grass with frantic force and bellowed a doom-song that made my flesh creep on my bones.
In his madness the brute was in the patch of light and out again, constantly. Once, as he oscillated there for a whole second, making ready to jump toward me, I fired another arrow with all the power of fear and hatred. It struck him, I could not determine where, and a moment later he reached my branch with his two great paws, and hung there by his claws, bending the limb so low and shaking all so tremendously that I clung on for very life. I felt his paw against my foot and stamped upon it viciously. He lifted that one; the bark gave way from beneath the other and down he thudded.
Again and again he leaped in his wrath. It sounded as if all the beasts of the jungle were there in mortal combat. I tried with another poisoned arrow, though I was sick, from my dread that he was proof against the venom. This shot I missed. It served to make the brute more furious, however, but finally I thought his ravings began to lose in force.
Once more he crouched in the light. This time my last arrow met him just as he rose in his spring. I failed to notice where it was planted in his body, for so tremendous was his leap that his whole head, chest and paws were up on the tree. The shock knocked me off; I fell, grasping a creeper, that stopped me with a jerk and a painful wrench.
The tiger dropped, striking me down the leg with one of his out-thrown paws; I thought my time had come. With a superhuman effort I chinned myself on the creeper, clutched the limb again, got an arm about it, reached a twig higher up and threw my leg fairly over. I was quickly in my old position again, blown, dizzy and wholly unable to believe the tiger had been evaded by such a clumsy scrambling. He was beating about in the trampled grass below, but his roar had grown hoarse and guttural; it seemed no longer so savage. Then I heard his breath blowing froth and bubbles-of-blood through his nostrils. My heart leaped exultantly—I knew an arrow had reached his lungs!
CHAPTER XIV
AN OLD ROUÉ
In a time incredibly short I heard sounds growing fainter where the great brute stiffened out in the grass. The poison, I knew, had gotten in its work at last. When the final convulsion had shivered itself out, what a death-silence settled on the jungle! It seemed as if for miles about, the lesser beasts had held their breath and fled from that theatre of throes and roars of the master-murderer.