citadel would fall to pieces.  As if the excitement of the moment was insufficient, the monster, gazing down the dry watercourse, caught sight of his companion, who, advancing up the bed of the nullah, stood irresolutely about twenty yards off.  The bully, who was evidently the male, after smelling at the head, came round the carcass, making a sort of complaisant purring—­“humming a kind of animal song,” and to it he went tooth and nail.

As he stood with his two fore feet on the haunch, while he tugged and tore out a beef-steak, I once more grasped old “Sam Nock,” and ran the muzzle out of the little port.  The white linen band marked a line behind his shoulders, and rather low, but, from the continued motion of his body, it was some moments before eye and finger agreed to pull trigger—­bang!  A shower of sand rattled on the dry leaves, and a roar of rage and pain satisfied me, even before the white smoke, which hung in the still air, had cleared away, to show the huge monster writhing and plunging where he had fallen.  Either directed by the fire, or by some slight noise made in the agitation of the moment, he saw me, and, with a hideous yell, scrambled up:  the roaring thunder of his voice filled the valley, and the echoes among the hills answered it, with the hootings of tribes of monkeys, who, scared out of sleep, sought the highest branches, at the sound of the well-known voice of the tyrant of the jungle.  I immediately perceived, to my great joy, that his hind quarters were paralyzed and useless, and that all danger was out of the question.  He sank down again on his elbows, and as he rested his now powerless limbs, I saw the blood welling out of a wound in the loins, as it shone in the moonlight, and trickled off his sleek-painted hide, like globules of quicksilver.  As I looked into his countenance, I saw all the devil alive there.  The will remained—­the power only had gone.  It was a sight never to be forgotten.  With head raised to the full stretch of his neck, he glared at me with an expression of such malignity, that it almost made one quail.  I thought of the native superstition of singeing off the whiskers of the newly killed tiger to lay his spirit, and no longer wondered at it.  With ears back, and mouth bleeding, he growled and roared in fitful uncertainty, as if he were trying, but unable, to measure the extent of the force that had laid him low.

Motionless myself, provocation ceased, and without further attempt to get on his legs, he continued to gaze on me; when I slowly lowered my head to the sight, and again pulled trigger.  This time, true to the mark, the ball entered just above the breastbone, and the smoke cleared off with his death-groan.  There he lay, foot to foot with his victim of last night, motionless—­dead.  My first impulse was to tear down the door behind, and get a thorough view of his proportions; but remembering that his companion, the tigress, had vanished only a short time ago close