VENGEANCE OF JHAPOO THE GOND 289 



scattered patter of a few warm raindrops could be heard in 

 the surrounding leaves. The moon, now more than three- 

 fourths of her way across the night sky, was obscured 

 but her refracted rays shed a ghostly half-light over all. 

 The night had become most oppressive, my brow ached 

 dully with the electric tension with which the atmosphere 

 seemed charged, and the sweat was pouring off me in 

 streams. 



I was listening intently now, sitting bolt upright in my 

 narrow hiding-place ; and it seemed that there was a 

 stealthy crepitation in the jungle about thirty yards in 

 front of my post. Straining my eyes in this direction, they 

 suddenly became aware of a dim shape creeping slowly 

 nearer but much closer in than the sounds had led me 

 to believe. My heart suddenly thumped heavily with 

 anticipation, and my hand went gently out and seized 

 the rifle. 



Above and beyond the dusky hill at my back the clouds 

 had compressed into an ominous inky mass ; and as I 

 glanced up at them there came a blinding zigzag flash. 

 Hardly had its resultant echoes rolled sonorously through 

 the masses of piled cloud when the rain could be heard 

 descending in a dense column, after the manner of the 

 sudden local storms that sometimes break the monotony 

 of the set-fair hot-weather season. The roaring rush of 

 its heavy fall could be heard swiftly approaching, and a 

 puff of hot wind, driven before it, swept groaning through 

 the uneasy trees. Shortly there blazed out another violet 

 coruscation, vividly illuminating the sombre earth and 

 simultaneously accompanied by one of those terrific 

 crackling detonations as of a hundred thunderbolts being 

 forged on piles of Cyclopean anvils. The lightning 

 passed, leaving a sensation of pitchy dark; but on the 

 retina, indelibly photographed by that flash, lay a clear-cut 

 picture a huge tiger arrested in his stealthy approach, 

 head down, glaring hard towards the foot of my tree ; 

 U 



