“Isn’t he splendid?” said my host, enthusiastically.

“Glorious!  I never saw such a noble creature.”

“Some people call it a black puma, but really it is not a puma at all.  That fellow is nearly eleven feet from tail to tip.  Four years ago he was a little ball of back fluff, with two yellow eyes staring out of it.  He was sold me as a new-born cub up in the wild country at the head-waters of the Rio Negro.  They speared his mother to death after she had killed a dozen of them.”

“They are ferocious, then?”

“The most absolutely treacherous and bloodthirsty creatures upon earth.  You talk about a Brazilian cat to an up-country Indian, and see him get the jumps.  They prefer humans to game.  This fellow has never tasted living blood yet, but when he does he will be a terror.  At present he won’t stand anyone but me in his den.  Even Baldwin, the groom, dare not go near him.  As to me, I am his mother and father in one.”

As he spoke he suddenly, to my astonishment, opened the door and slipped in, closing it instantly behind him.  At the sound of his voice the huge, lithe creature rose, yawned and rubbed its round, black head affectionately against his side, while he patted and fondled it.

“Now, Tommy, into your cage!” said he.

The monstrous cat walked over to one side of the room and coiled itself up under a grating.  Everard King came out, and taking the iron handle which I have mentioned, he began to turn it.  As he did so the line of bars in the corridor began to pass through a slot in the wall and closed up the front of this grating, so as to make an effective cage.  When it was in position he opened the door once more and invited me into the room, which was heavy with the pungent, musty smell peculiar to the great carnivora.

“That’s how we work it,” said he.  “We give him the run of the room for exercise, and then at night we put him in his cage.  You can let him out by turning the handle from the passage, or you can, as you have seen, coop him up in the same way.  No, no, you should not do that!”

I had put my hand between the bars to pat the glossy, heaving flank.  He pulled it back, with a serious face.

“I assure you that he is not safe.  Don’t imagine that because I can take liberties with him anyone else can.  He is very exclusive in his friends—­aren’t you, Tommy?  Ah, he hears his lunch coming to him!  Don’t you, boy?”

A step sounded in the stone-flagged passage, and the creature had sprung to his feet, and was pacing up and down the narrow cage, his yellow eyes gleaming, and his scarlet tongue rippling and quivering over the white line of his jagged teeth.  A groom entered with a coarse joint upon a tray, and thrust it through the bars to him.  He pounced lightly upon it, carried it off to the corner, and there, holding it between his paws, tore and wrenched at it, raising his bloody muzzle every now and then to look at us.  It was a malignant and yet fascinating sight.