Frank hardly heard the report. All he knew was that the snarling face disappeared as quickly as it had come. The whole thing was an affair of seconds. Shot through the brain the tiger dropped back to the ground with a heavy thud and fell dead beside the staunch elephant which had never moved all through the terrible ordeal.
A cry of relief and a prayer to Allah burst from the grey-bearded Mahommedan _mahout_, as he straightened himself; and Wargrave turned with glowing face and outstretched hand to the girl.
"Oh, well done! Splendidly done!" he cried. "You saved me from being lugged bodily out of the _howdah_ or at least from being mauled. This lever jammed and I couldn't re-load."
Her eyes shining and face beaming with excitement she shook his hand.
"Wasn't it thrilling? I thought he'd have got both of us." Then to the _mahout_ she continued in Urdu, "Gul Dad, are you hurt?"
The man was solemnly feeling himself all over. He stared at a rent in the shoulder of his coat, torn by the tiger's claw. It was the only injury that he had suffered. He put his finger on it and grumbled:
"Missie-_baba_, the _shaitan_ (devil) has torn my coat."
In the reaction from the strain the girl and Wargrave went off in peals of laughter at his words.
"But are you not wounded?" Miss Benson repeated. "Has it not clawed you?"
"No, missie-_baba_; but it was my new coat," he insisted.[1]
[1] A similar incident occurred in real life near Alipur Duar in Eastern Bengal to a lady and an officer on a female elephant named Dundora during a beat. But in this case it was the man that killed the tiger with his second rifle when it was standing on the elephant's head with its fore-paws on the _howdah_-rail. I can personally testify to Dundora's immobility when facing a charging tiger.--THE AUTHOR.
Frank looked down at the tiger stretched motionless on the yellow grass.
"By George, you shot him dead enough, Miss Benson!" he exclaimed.
"Yes; but it's well to be careful. I've seen a tiger look as dead as that and yet spring up and maul a man who approached it incautiously," she said.
She raised her rifle and covered the prostrate animal.
Wargrave took out a couple of heavy, copper-cased cartridges and flung them one by one at the tiger's head, striking it on the jaw and in the eye. The animal did not move.