He took up the torch she had planted in the earth, to examine the tiger, dead and mangled in the grass, One of the creature's great front paws had been rudely torn from his body. He could only have escaped instantaneous death by having moved from the bomb at the moment of its explosion.
"Your robe looks mussed," Grenville continued, with a gesture towards the animal's motionless body. "But I think it can be washed."
Elaine slightly shivered at sight of the frame now done with life.
"You've killed him," she said. "I'm glad!"
He took her firmly by the arm and led her away through the thicket.
When they reached the camp, Elaine was not yet fully convinced that Grenville was uninjured. She brought him a rag she had torn from some of her clothing and begged him to wash his reddened jaw. Even the restoration of his former stubbled complexion could not suffice to bring her that sense of certainty and calm essential before she could sleep.
She remained beside him at their fire till long past the midnight hour. Indeed, she had made no move to retire when at length the weird, unwelcome disturbance made by the tide had begun its uncanny chorus. Perhaps she had waited for the conclusion of this added feature of the night's long ritual of nerve-attacking events, for she seemed to be considerably cheered when its final wail had died upon the air.
"It seems to me that doesn't continue quite as long as it did at first," she said to Grenville, as she rose at last to go alone to her cavern.... "I think you ought to rest. I wish you would."
But, for some time after she had gone, he sat there wondering if those abominable but protective cries, that haunted the island's solitude, were actually on the wane.
"God help us if they are!" he said, to himself, but he went to bed and slept.
Elaine had not yet appeared on the scene when Grenville went down to the jungle. The morning hour was still decidedly early, but plans and impatience to be up and at work had prodded the man from his rest. The lassitude that should have followed his night of excitement had not yet laid its weight upon him.
Apparently nothing had come to the jungle scene where the tiger had met his end. The great form lay there, torn and rigid, but no sign of the cat could be discovered.