“Oh, you did shoot him?”
“Don’t ask me how! I am counted a fair shot—I was far better then; but when I levelled my rifle at that brute’s heart, when I realized how much hung on the result—for if I had missed, or if I had merely wounded him, he would have been in the tonga at a single spring, and nothing under heaven itself could have saved those dearest to me from a horrible death—when I realized all this, I don’t know how I found the nerve to pull the trigger. I suppose I knew it was the only chance. My appearance had enraged the animal and he was just preparing to spring. This I do know, and I’m not ashamed to own it: when I saw that I had laid the tiger out with a single shot—a thing that doesn’t happen twice in a lifetime—I fell flat beside the tonga in the act of helping my wife down; for the first and last time in my life I fainted.
“Yes, it was a pretty hard trial on the nerves,” resumed the colonel, as our discussion of the situation sank into silence, “but nothing to what my wife had gone through. That tiger had followed them for more than four miles through the jungle. The bilewallah, with rare presence of mind, had managed to keep the bullocks to their steady jog-trot—any increase of pace or appearance of flight would have provoked a spring. She, poor woman, had succeeded in hushing her baby, for had the child cried, nothing is surer than that the sound would have led to an attack. It must have been an awful 323 four miles for her. It was years before she recovered from the effect.”
“And why did not the tiger attack them?” inquired Jones. “Does any one know?”
“The animal was doubtless waiting to kill them till they got into the vicinity of water,” explained Colonel Eyre. “Tigers often do that with cattle and other large quarry. There was water a mile or less further on. I had noticed it myself in passing. If I had not come upon the ground, another ten minutes would have sealed their fate.”
“So it may fairly be said that your dream was the means of saving their lives,” observed Tom Everton, who, although the most silent, had not been the least attentive of the listeners.
“I think we may fairly admit so much,” replied Colonel Eyre. “If it had not been for my dream, I do not think the report of the man-eater would have brought me back. On the other hand, but for hearing about the man-eater and actually being awakened by the roar of a tiger, I am not sure that the dream would have had weight enough with me to induce me to leave a detachment on the march—a serious thing, gentlemen, as some of you who are soldiers know well enough.”
“It’s a very curious circumstance, certainly,” observed Sir Alan; and then there was a pause.
“But see here, colonel,” Tom broke in again, “the dream, if a warning at all, was a warning of danger to you, yourself, and though you certainly heard Mrs. Eyre’s voice calling to you, yet it was urging you to save yourself, and not summoning you to her assistance.”
“That is very true, and it puzzled me at the time. But, as I argued, it is wonderful enough to get a warning of danger in the future at all; you must not expect to have it spelled out to you in large print. Now, as to this dream of Mrs. Everton’s—it prefigures danger to you, as I understand?”