Once only did the hunters catch sight of the tiger again. After the tigress had escaped, she must have worked her way around to the thick bushes behind the hunters; and there she must have been waiting for her husband. A few minutes later the men caught a glimpse of the tiger and tigress, husband and wife, walking together leisurely beyond those bushes, across a short open space, toward the next jungle. There they would live in the future.
And as the hunters saw that sight of the tiger and tigress walking away with stately steps beyond the reach of their guns, Prince Henry took off his hat to the tiger!
"Gentlemen, I am glad that he got away!" he said to the other hunters. "I do not think that any man in history has ever charged sixty enemies single-handed, and has gained his purpose—to save the life of one dear to him."
Then Prince Henry wiped his forehead, pretending that he had taken off his hat to do that!
And so the famous tiger hunt was over. It often happens like that, in spite of sixty hunters and a thousand other men: five minutes of thrilling excitement—and then it is all over! I must tell you that if you go to hunt a tiger, even with all that preparation, you never really know whether you are going to hunt the tiger, or the tiger is going to hunt you! And if you do not have elephants to help you, the chances are that the tiger will hunt you.
Men, with all their guns and other inventions, can in some cases be saved from some animals only by other animals—from tigers by elephants and buffaloes, as I have described to you.