ss, of all other
living creatures including his fellow-tigers, he had come to grief in the
end; and, from the trap to the cramped cage, by elephant-back and
railroad and steamship, ever in the cramped cage, he had journeyed across
seas and continents to Mulcachy's Animal Home. Prospective buyers had
examined but not dared to purchase. But Mulcachy had been undeterred.
His own fighting blood leapt hot at sight of the magnificent striped cat.
It was a challenge of the brute in him to excel. And, two weeks of hell,
for the great tiger and for all the other animals, were required to teach
him his first lesson.

Ben Bolt he had been named, and he arrived indomitable and
irreconcilable, though almost paralysed from eight weeks of cramp in his
narrow cage which had restricted all movement. Mulcachy should have
undertaken the job immediately, but two weeks were lost by the fact that
he had got married and honeymooned for that length of time. And in that
time, in a large cage of concrete and iron, Ben Bolt had exercised and
recovered the use of his muscles, and added to his hatred of the
two-legged things, puny against him in themselves, who by trick and wile
had so helplessly imprisoned him.

So, on this morning when hell yawned for him, he was ready and eager to
meet all comers. They came, equipped with formulas, nooses, and forked
iron bars. Five of them tossed nooses in through the bars upon the floor
of his cage. He snarled and struck at the curling ropes, and for ten
minutes was a grand and impossible wild creature, lacking in nothing save
the wit and the patience possessed by the miserable two-legged things.
And then, impatient and careless of the inanimate ropes, he paused,
snarling at the men, with one hind foot resting inside a noose. The next
moment, craftily lifted up about the girth of his leg by an iron fork,
the noose tightened and the bite of it sank home into his flesh and
pride. He leaped, he roared, he was a maniac of ferocity. Again and
again, almost burning their palms, he tore the rope smoking through their
hands. But ever they took in the slack and paid it out again, until, ere
he was aware, a similar noose tightened on his foreleg. What he had done
was nothing to what he now did. But he was stupid and impatient. The
man-creatures were wise and patient, and a third leg and a fourth leg
were finally noosed, so that, with many men tailing on to the ropes, he
was dragged ignominiously on his s