52 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



short, disgusted " Wough ! " and forthwith entered the 

 undesirable stretch of parching grass. 



He was moving quicker now, at a fast walk, with open 

 jaws and lolling tongue. The burning air that rose from 

 the whitened grass almost choked him ; the intense sun 

 was playing like molten fire along his back ; he was 

 purblind in its quivering glare. Deflected by that " stop " 

 in the tree, he crossed the sun-beaten open at an angle to 

 the course he had originally held. This chance deviation 

 was his salvation that day. 



With half-closed eyes he pursued his sullen course. 

 Presently tree-trunks came into sight, the dark line of a 

 shady ravine loomed through the dancing mirage, and he 

 was passing from that awful grass into barer ground, 

 studded with small trees, and carpeted with dry leaves 

 in which his burning pads made a heedless crashing. 

 Already he enjoyed in anticipation the grateful obscurity 

 of the shady bamboos close ahead. A few paces more, 

 and their cool refuge would close over his scorching hide 

 when all at once a stunning report cracked in the air 

 above him, and he stumbled forward helplessly on his 

 great nose ! In an instant with the same movement, as it 

 were he had picked himself up and, uttering a loud 

 guttural grunt, was galloping clumsily away ! Dashing 

 incontinently half through a bush, he swerved through the 

 trees, with whirling tail, for a little depression leading 

 down to the jungle below, and in that moment, with 

 another dinning "crack!" something struck the ground 

 violently below him and drove up a sharp spurt of pinging 

 splinters. " Wough!" he bellowed again. Then he was 

 gone! . . . 



That bamboo jungle communicated farther on with a 

 long, deep khdra ; the wooded course of the latter led 

 gradually up into one of the thickest portions of the sur- 

 rounding forests two miles away; and in the dense under- 

 growth of those fastnesses a tiger lay all that afternoon, 



