We were both good shots, and I thought our safety lay in killing the beast as he rose in the air.  Aiming at his head, I stepped slowly backward, and shouted to my friend to cover the tiger and shoot as he sprang.  All this occurred in less time than I tell of it.  Hardly had I stepped two paces backward when the tiger leaped toward me.  As he rose, his throat was exposed for a moment, and I planted a bullet in his breast.  Simultaneously a ball from the other rifle struck his side.  We fired so closely together that neither of us heard the report of the other’s weapon.  The tiger gave a roar of agony, and despite the wounds he received, either of which would have been fatal, he completed his spring so nearly that he caught me by the foot and inflicted a wound that lamed me for several months, and left permanent scars.

The natives, hearing the report of our rifles, came to our assistance, and so great was their reverence for the tiger, that they prostrated themselves before his quivering body, and muttered some words which I could not understand.

Though assured that the beast was dead, they hesitated to enter the thicket to search for the body of their companion, and it was only on my leading the way that they entered it.

We found the remains of the poor native somewhat mutilated, though less so than I expected.  There was no trace of suffering upon his features, and I was confirmed in my theory that he fainted the moment he was seized, and was not conscious afterward.  His friends insisted upon burying the body where they found it, and said it was their custom to do so.  They piled logs above the grave, and after the observance of certain pagan rites, to secure the repose of the deceased, they signified their readiness to proceed.

The tiger was one of the largest of his kind.  I had his skin carefully removed, and sent it with my official report to St. Petersburg.  A Chinese mandarin who met me near Lake Hinka offered me a high price for the skin, but I declined his offer, in order to show our Emperor what his Siberian possessions contained.

[Illustration:  TAIL PIECE—­FLASK]

CHAPTER XVI.

On the morning of September 28th we arrived at Ekaterin-Nikolskoi, a flourishing settlement, said to contain nearly three hundred houses.  It stood on a plateau forty feet above the river, and was the best appearing village I had seen since leaving Habarofka.  The people that gathered on the bank were comfortably clad and evidently well fed, but I could not help wondering how so many could leave their labor to look at a steamboat.  The country was considered excellent for agriculture, yielding abundantly all the grains that had been tried.

On the Amoor the country below Gorin belongs to the Maritime province, which has its capital at Nicolayevsk.  Above Gorin is the Province of The Amoor, controlled by the governor at Blagoveshchensk.  In the Maritime Province the settlers are generally of the civilian or peasant class, while in the Amoor Province they are mostly Cossacks.  The latter depend more upon themselves than the former, and I was told that this was one cause of their prosperity.  Many peasants in the Maritime Province do not raise enough flour for their own use, and rely upon government when there is a deficiency.