"Gad! He's broken through!" Finnerty growled.
Prince Ananda, thinking the tiger was escaping, had the elephant driven forward to give Boelke a shot at the fleeing beast; but just as they reached the grass there was a coughing roar, a flashing turmoil of brown and gold in the sun, and the elephant, terrified by the ferocious onslaught, whirled just as Boelke's rifle barked. Straight back for the fringe of trees where Finnerty waited the elephant raced, the tiger clinging to his rump and striving to reach the howdah.
Burra Moti knew the elephant was running away, and, at a command, shuffled forward with the intent of peeling the tiger from his perch with her trunk. But the fleeing animal, taking Moti for a new enemy, swerved to the right under the pipal, a long arm of which swept away the howdah, leaving Herr Boelke sprawled on the limb like a huge gorilla and yelling: "Ach, Gott! Hel-lp!"
The tiger was carried away in the wreck, and now, thirty feet away, was crouched, his tail lashing from side to side.
The girl had struggled to her feet and stood dazed, clinging to the wrecked howdah. The tiger was in a nasty mood; he would charge the first move the girl made, Finnerty knew, and nothing but a miracle shot through the heart or brain could stop him in time to save her. Ordering the mahout to pick the girl up, he dropped to the ground. Holding his gun from the hip, both barrels cocked, he slipped past the girl to stand between her and the snarling brute, saying: "Keep cool! Keep your face to the tiger and step back; the elephant will pick you up."
His blue, fearless, Irish eye lay along the gun barrels, looking into the yellow eyes of the tiger as he spoke to the girl. Well he knew how straight his shot must be, or that flat, sloping forehead, with its thick plate of bone, would glance the bullet like armour plate.
A little cry of pain, the thud of a falling body, told him that the girl had gone down at the first step. For a fraction of a second his eye had wavered from the gun-sight, and the tiger, with a hoarse growl, rose in his catapult charge. Both barrels of Finnerty's rifle blazed as he was swept backward by a push from Moti's trunk, and the tiger landed upon two gleaming ivory swords that, with a twist of the mighty head, threw him twenty feet into the scrub.
With a roar of disgruntled anger he bounded away toward cover in the cane, pursued by Gilfain, whose mahout had driven the elephant across at the sound of the tiger's charge.
Finnerty, telling the mahout to make Moti kneel, turned to the girl, who sat with a hand clasping an ankle, her face white with pain; and as he lifted her like a child, like a child she whispered with breaking passion: "You, you! God—why should it be you again?"
Then Finnerty commanded the mahout to retrieve Herr Boelke from his perch, pick up the prince, who had scuttled off some distance when he fell, and take them home.