The Keepers of the People

1155One day the foresters, having trapped a fine, full-grown tiger, had brought it down on a waggon to live in the tiger-garden. Althea had seen it in the courtyard; and after admiring its size and fierceness — she had never seen so savage a brute — she had gone back to the first Book of the Wisdom of the Princes, in which she was searching for accounts of the outbreaks of old, brutal religions, which had from time to time occurred, and had been stamped out by the ruthless measures fitting their brutality. An hour later Colonel Sayers rushed in, rifle in hand, and cried, “Thank God, you’re here! That tiger got away as they were putting him into his cage, and he’s loose in the gardens! Stay here whatever you do! Or better still, go up to your own rooms, he might jump in through the window!” He rushed out; and it flashed on Althea that the tiger-garden was very near the Pavilion of Wonderful Delights. She sprang to the rack; seized the heaviest magazine rifle; thrust half a dozen cartridges into the magazine; leapt out of the window; and raced for the garden of the Pavilion. There were three gates to pass: and the mutes opened them quickly to her fierce cries for haste. She ran through the last garden with a very uneasy feeling about her back: the brute might be crouched in any clump of bushes she passed, and spring upon her before she had the chance to use the rifle. As the gate of the garden of the Pavilion swung open, she heard a shrill scream from the further end of it; and raced to the spot. Two maids running to the Pavilion, their eyes starting in a deadly terror, passed her as she raced; and she came out on to the furthest lawn in the nick of time. Latchimi and her maids had been playing with the child when the tiger sprang on to the wall: she had screamed at the sight, and stood for a breath, frozen with terror for her child. The tiger had sprung down, she had dropped her child, and run towards the beast, and was standing some fifteen yards from it when Althea came. As quick as thought Althea dropped on one knee and aimed: as she did so, with a lithe spring the tiger halved the distance between himself and the girl. Before he could leap, Althea, with a violent effort, checked the quivering of her nerves, held the rifle steady, and fired; and the bullet glanced along the brute’s ribs tearing a jagged wound through the flesh and hide a foot long. With a savage roar the tiger turned, and bit furiously at the wound.