You've got to kill him--that's
it. And then when he comes roaring on, your rifle jumps to your shoulder
of itself."
"Do you make up your mind beforehand that if the animal should kill you,
it is all right?" asked Hester.
"By no means, I give you my word of honor," answered the major,
laughing.
"Well now," answered Hester, "except I had made up my mind that if I was
killed it was all right, I couldn't meet the tiger."
"But you see, my dear," said the major, "you do not know what it is to
have confidence in your eye and your rifle. It is a form of power that
you soon come to feel as resting in yourself--a power to destroy the
thing that opposes you!"
Hester fell a-thinking, and the talk went on without her. She never
heard the end of the story, but was roused by the laughter that followed
it.
"It was no tiger at all--that was the joke of the thing," said the
major. "There was a roar of laughter when the brute--a great lumbering
floundering hyena, rushed into the daylight. But the barrel of my rifle
was bitten together as a schoolboy does a pen--a quill-pen, I mean. They
have horribly powerful jaws, those hyenas.
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