A.D. 1823.  A.D. 
    Sacred to the memory of general Robert Francis Cunningham
    who died on this spot
    AETAT 81
    from
    wounds inflicted by A
    tiger

There was no sound audible except the purring of the lamp flame and the heavy breathing of the three as Cunningham gazed down at the very crudely carved, stained, often-desecrated slab below which lay the first of the Anglo-Indian Cunninghams.

This man—­these crumbled bones that lay under a forgotten piece of rock—­had made all of their share of history.  They had begotten “Pukka” Cunningham, who had hacked the name deeper yet in the crisscrossed annals of a land of war.  It was strange—­it was queer —­uncanny—­for the third of the Cunninghams to be sitting on the stone.  It was unexpected, yet it seemed to have a place in the scheme of things, for he caught himself searching his memory backward.

He received an impression that something was expected of him.  He knew, by instinct and reasoning he could not have explained, that neither Mahommed Gunga nor the other men would say a word until he spoke.  They were waiting—­he knew they were—­for a word, or a sign, or an order (he did not know which), on which would hang the future of all three of them.

Yet there was no hurry—­no earthly hurry.  He felt sure of it.  In the silence and the blackness—­in the tense, steamy atmosphere of expectancy—­he felt perfectly at ease, although he knew, too, that there was superstition to be reckoned with—­and that is something which a white man finds hard to weigh and cope with, as a rule.

The sweat ran down his face in little streams a the prickly heat began to move across his skin, like a fiery-footed centiped beneath his undershirt, but he noticed, neither.  He began to be unconscious anything except the knowledge that the bones of his grandsire lay underneath him and that Mahommed Gunga waited for the word that would fit into the scheme and solve a problem.

“Are there any tigers here now?” he asked presently, in a perfectly normal voice.  He spoke as he had done when his servant asked him which suit he would wear.

“Ha, sahib!  Many.”

“Man-eaters, by any chance?”

Mahommed Gunga and the other man exchanged quick glances, but Cunningham did not look up.  He did not see the quick-flashed whites as their eyes met and looked down again.

“There is one, sahib—­so say the kansamah and the head man—­a full-grown tiger, in his prime.”

“I will shoot him.”  Four words, said quietly—­not “Do you think,” or “I would like to,” or “Perhaps.”  They were perfectly definite and without a trace of excitement; yet this man had never seen a tiger.

“Very good, sahib.”  That, too, was spoken in a level voice, but Mahommed Gunga’s eyes and the other man’s met once again above his head.