Fortunately the early moon had already risen and her silvery sheen soon restored a little of my former range of vision. The birds of the day had gone to roost by now, and their places had been taken by the birds of the night. The persistent 'chuck-chuck-chuckoo' of night-jars resounded along the nullah, as these early harbingers of the night sought their insect prey along the cooling banks. Time passed again, and then a deathly silence fell upon the scene. Not even the chirrup of a cricket disturbed the stillness, and my friends, the night-jars, had apparently gone else where in their search for food. Glancing downwards at the human remains, it seemed that one arm reached upwards to me in supplication or called perhaps for vengeance. For tunately the head was turned away, so that I could not see the frightful contortion of the features, which I had noticed earlier that afternoon.

All at once the strident belling of an alarmed sambar broke the silence and was persistently followed by a succession of similar calls from a spot I judged to be about half

a mile away. These were followed by the sharp cry of spotted-deer, and echoed up the nullah by a restless brain fever bird in his weird call of 'brain-fever, brain-fever', repeated in rising crescenao. I breathed a sigh of relief and braced my nerves and muscles for final action. My friends, the night-watchmen of the jungle, had faithfully accomplished their task and I knew the tigress was approaching and had been seen.

The calls then gradually died away. This meant that the tigress had passed out of the range of the callers and was now close by. I strained my eyes on the bend to the right, twenty yards down the nullah, around which, at any moment, I expected the man-eater to appear. But nothing happened. Thirty minutes passed, then forty-five, by the hands of my wrist-watch, clearly visible in the moonlight. Strange, I thought; the tigress should have appeared long ago. She would not take forty-five minutes to cover half a mile.

And then a horrible feeling of imminent danger came over me. Many times before had that obscure sixth sense, which we all possess but few develop, stood me in good stead in my many wanderings in the forests of India and Burma, and on the African veldt. I had not the slightest doubt that somehow, in spite of all my precautions, complete screening and absolute stillness, the tigress had discovered my presence and was at that moment probably stalking me preparatory to a final spring. In moments of danger, we who know the jungle think quickly. It is not braveness that goads the mind to such quick thinking, for I confess that at this moment I was very afraid and could feel beads of cold sweat trickling down my face. I knew the tigress could not be on the nullah itself, or below me, or I would have seen her long before. She might have been on the opposite bank, hidden in the dense under growth and watching my position, but somehow I felt that her presence there would not account for the acutely-growing sense of danger that increasingly beset me. She could only be above and behind me. Suddenly it was borne home to me that the four-foot wall of rock behind me prevented me from looking backwards unless I raised myself to a half-crouching, half-kneeling position, which would make a steady shot almost impossible, apart from completely giving away my position to any watcher on the opposite bank, or on the nullah-bed itself. Momentarily, I cursed myself for this lack of forethought, which now threatened to become my undoing. As I hesitated for another second, a thin trickle of sand slid down from above, probably dislodged by the killer, now undoubtedly very close above me, and gathering herself for a final spring. I hesitated no longer; I forced my numbed legs to raise me to a half-crouching position, simultaneously moving the cocked .405 around, till the end of the muzzle was in line with my face. Then I raised myself a fraction higher, till both my eyes and the muzzle, came above the ledge.

A fearful sight revealed itself. There was the tigress, hardly eight feet away and extended on her belly, in the act of creeping down the sloping rock towards me.

contd