But it was quite the way of Warwick Sahib to sweep his gray, tired-out eyes over a scene and seemingly perceive nothing; yet in reality absorbing every detail with the accuracy of a photographic plate.  And his seeming indifference was not a pose with him, either.  He was just a great sportsman who was also an English gentleman, and he had learned certain lessons of impassiveness from the wild.  Only one of the brown faces he beheld was worth a lingering glance.  And when he met that one his eyes halted in their sweeping survey—­and Warwick Sahib smiled.

That face was the brown, eager visage of Little Shikara.  And the blood of the boy flowed to the skin, and he glowed red all over through the brown.

It was only the faintest of quiet, tolerant smiles; but it meant more to him than almost any kind of an honour could have meant to the prematurely gray man in the howdah.  The latter passed on to his estate, and some of the villagers went back to their women and their thatch huts.  But still Little Shikara stood motionless—­and it wasn’t until the thought suddenly came to him that possibly the beaters had already gathered and were telling the story of the kill that with startling suddenness he raced back through the gates to the village.

Yes, the beaters had assembled in a circle under a tree, and most of the villagers had gathered to hear the story.  He slipped in among them, and listened with both outstanding little ears.  Warwick Sahib had dismounted from his elephant as usual, the beaters said, and with but one attendant had advanced up the bed of a dry creek.  This was quite like Warwick Sahib, and Little Shikara felt himself tingling again.  Other hunters, particularly many of the rich sahibs from across the sea, shot their tigers from the security of the howdah; but this wasn’t Warwick’s way of doing.  The male tiger had risen snarling from his lair, and had been felled at the first shot.

Most of the villagers had supposed that the story would end at this point.  Warwick Sahib’s tiger hunts were usually just such simple and expeditious affairs.  The gun would lift to his shoulder, the quiet eyes would glance along the barrel—­and the tiger, whether charging or standing still—­would speedily die.  But to-day there had been a curious epilogue.  Just as the beaters had started toward the fallen animal, and the white Heaven-born’s cigarette-case was open in his hand, Nahara, Nahar’s great, tawny mate, had suddenly sprung forth from the bamboo thickets.

She drove straight to the nearest of the beaters.  There was no time whatever for Warwick to take aim.  His rifle leaped, like a live thing, in his arms, but not one of the horrified beaters had seen his eyes lower to the sights.  Yet the bullet went home—­they could tell by the way the tiger flashed to her breast in the grass.

Yet she was only wounded.  One of the beaters, starting, had permitted a bough of a tree to whip Warwick in the face, and the blow had disturbed what little aim he had.  It was almost a miracle that he had hit the great cat at all.  At once the thickets had closed around her, and the beaters had been unable to drive her forth again.