VENGEANCE OF JHAPOO THE GOND 261 



"There was a clatter of stones, a rush, and to my 

 astonishment out sprang the dark figure of the old Gond ; 

 and, in a manner utterly at variance with his usual calm, 

 raining imprecations the while, he reached the dying tiger 

 and whirled down a hurricane of blows with his loaded 

 cudgel deaf to the loud cry of warning which I raised. 

 Then up with a horrid gurgling *Wough!' rose a tawny 

 mass, towered over its puny assailant, and bore him to the 

 earth. 



" Next instant I had jumped down, placed the muzzle 

 against a huge ear and blown the skull inside to fragments, 

 but, indeed, unnecessarily, for the brute was quite dead, and 

 had already released its victim, who was struggling feebly 

 to his knees. With a gasp of inarticulate passion the old 

 man groped for his wretched stick, raised it aloft, and then 

 staggered down sidewise." 



The Colonel was silent for a few moments. He reached 

 himself another cheroot, lit it slowly, puffed awhile, and 

 continued the thread of his narrative. 



"A bad business was that night's work, Alastair," he 

 went on. " Dying effort though it was, the tiger had in- 

 flicted terrible injuries on poor old Jhapoo. What on earth 

 induced the old fool to indulge in such idiotic behaviour I 

 cannot tell ; it may have been a desire to keep up the 

 illusion, that pigheaded pride that some Indians possess 

 in imagining themselves to be the vehicle of the super- 

 natural. All that could be done we did for the old shikari. 

 Antiseptics were perhaps not properly understood in those 

 days. At any rate, whether it was from shock or a subtle 

 form of blood-poisoning, Jhapoo, about the fifth day, 

 began to sink. I had put him into my own office tent, 

 and there, that burning evening in May, he asked to see 

 me alone. 



" Though failing fast, the old man had an eager glow in 

 his keen eye, that eye, alas ! that would no longer pierce 

 for him or me the secrets of his beloved jungles, and I 



