To face death is easy enough--according to some people--but to face nothing at all is at all times trying. Verkimier felt it to be so at that moment. But he was a true hero and conquered himself.
"Come now," he said mentally, "don't be an ass! Don't lose your shance by voomanly fears. Keep kviet."
Another moment and there was a very slight sound right over his head. He glanced upwards--as far as the little hole would permit--and there, not a foot from him, was a tawny yellow throat! with a tremendous paw moving slowly forward--so slowly that it might have suggested the imperceptible movement of the hour-hand of a watch, or of a glacier. There was indeed motion, but it was not perceptible.
The professor's perceptions were quick. He did not require to think. He knew that to use the rifle at such close quarters was absolutely impossible. He knew that the slightest motion would betray him. He could see that as yet he was undiscovered, for the animal's nose was straight for the goat, and he concluded that either his having buried himself was a safeguard against being smelt, or that the tiger had a cold in its head. He thought for one moment of bursting up with a yell that would scare the monster out of his seven senses--if he had seven--but dismissed the thought as cowardly, for it would be sacrificing success to safety. He knew not what to do, and the cold perspiration consequent upon indecision at a supreme moment broke out all over him. Suddenly he thought of the revolver!
Like lightning he seized it, pointed it straight up and fired. The bullet--a large army revolver one--entered the throat of the animal, pierced the root of the tongue, crashed through the palate obliquely, and entered the brain. The tiger threw one indescribable somersault and fell--fell so promptly that it blocked the mouth of the pit, all the covering earth of which had been blown away by the shot, and Verkimier could feel the hairy side of the creature, and hear the beating of its heart as it gasped its life away. But in his cramped position he could not push it aside. Well aware of the tenacity of life in tigers, he thought that if the creature revived it would certainly grasp him even in its dying agonies, for the weight of its body and its struggles were already crushing in the upper part of the hole.