THE BIOGRAPHY OF A TIGER 27 



A sudden clattering of strong, widespread hoofs, and the 

 big hind was galloping in terror up the bed of the ravine. 

 Heavy feet scattered the loose stones and shingle, rushing 

 madly away in other directions in the dark. Then into 

 the moonlight, from the gloom of the big mangoes, shot a 

 long, low, heavy something that rushed swiftly to cut off 

 her course with a rattling throaty sound, and a striking 

 right and left with keen hooking claws. One of those 

 blows went home as the wretched hind reached some long 

 grass in the stream-bed, and a hind leg went down. The 

 momentary check sufficed to seal her fate. Something of 

 enormous weight and strength clutched the nape of her 

 neck, five more cruelly lacerating claws fixed immovably 

 into her long, sensitive nose, and her throat under the ears 

 was seized from below in a terrible grip. 



For a moment or so the tigress and her prey remained 

 motionless in this fearsome posture. 



Then there was a sudden quick movement, a dull crack, 

 and the poor old hind sank down under her murderess, 

 sank stone-dead, her cervical vertebra neatly dislocated 

 by a past mistress in the art of practical osteology. 



Hardly had these kaleidoscopic occurrences flashed by 

 in swift succession than the young tiger dashed up, tail 

 on end, coughing, glaring, and rattling his throat most 

 diabolically. Scarcely less swift than mother he rushed 

 in. With a horrible snarl he flung himself on the " kill " 

 just as mother relaxed that awful grip of her jaws and 

 raised her beautiful head in the moonlight ; and in an 

 instant his whiskers were buried and bedabbled in the 

 hind's warm gory neck, which he twisted ferociously from 

 side to side, his ears depressed, as he made most unfilial 

 faces at his parent. 



But the time was very unpropitious. Mother was not 

 at that moment at all in a frame of mind to brook any 

 sort of interference. She made a horrid, warning, vomiting 

 kind of noise in her great throat. Then her ears went 



