“‘I don’t know how long I lay there, stupidly gazing up into the brute’s eyes; but presently I made a movement to sit up, and then I saw that I still held my rifle in my hand. While I was looking at the weapon, with a vague, harassing sense that there was something I ought to do with it, the tiger picked me up by the left shoulder and made off with me into the jungle; and still I clung to the rifle, though I had forgotten what use I should put it to.
“‘The grip of the tiger’s teeth upon my shoulder I felt but numbly; and yet, as I found afterwards, it was so far from gentle as to have shattered the bone.
“‘Having carried me perhaps half a mile, the brute dropped me, and raising her head uttered a peculiar, soft cry. Two cubs appeared at once in answer to the summons, and bounded up to meet her. At the first glimpse of me, however, they sheered off in alarm; and their dam had to coax them for some minutes, rolling me over softly with her paw, or picking me up and laying me down in front of them, before she could convince them that I was harmless.
“‘At last the youngsters suffered themselves to be persuaded. They threw themselves upon me with eager though not very dangerous ferocity, and began to maul and worry me. Their claws and teeth seemed to awaken me for the first time to a sense of pain. I threw off the snarling little animals roughly, and started to crawl away. In vain the cubs tried to hold me. The mother lay watching the game with satisfaction.
“‘Instinctively I crept toward a tree, and little by little the desire for escape began to stir in my dazed brain. When I was within a foot or two of the tree the tiger made a great bound, seized me in her jaws, and carried me back to the spot whence I had started.
“‘“Why,”’ thought I to myself, ‘“this is just exactly the way a cat plays with a mouse!”
“‘At the same moment a cloud seemed to roll off my brain. No words of mine, my boy, can describe the measureless and sickening horror of that moment, when realization was thus suddenly flashed upon me.
“‘At the shock my rifle slipped from my relaxing fingers; but I recovered it desperately, with a sensation as if I had been falling over a precipice.
“‘I knew now what I wanted to do with it. The suddenness of my gesture, however, appeared to warn the tiger that I had yet a little too much life in me. She growled and shook me roughly. I took the hint, you may be sure, and resumed my former attitude of stupidity; but my faculties were now alert enough, and at the cruelest tension.
“‘Again the cubs began mauling me. I repelled them gently, at the same time looking to my rifle. I saw that there was a cartridge ready to be projected into the chamber. I remembered that the magazine was not more than half empty.