he blood drummed in my ears and my neck muscles ached with the
strain but I thanked Heaven that my hands were steady.

Caldwell sat like a graven image, the stock of his little 22 caliber high
power Savage nestling against his cheek. Our eyes met for an instant and I
knew in that glance that the blue tiger would never make another charge,
for if I missed him, Harry wouldn't. For ten minutes we waited and my heart
lost a beat when twenty feet away the grass began to move again--but
rapidly and _up the ravine_.

I saw Harry watching the lair with a puzzled look which changed to one of
disgust as a chorus of yells sounded across the ravine and three Chinese
wood cutters appeared on the opposite slope. They were taking a short cut
home, shouting to drive away the tigers--and they had succeeded only too
well, for the blue tiger had slipped back to the heart of the lair from
whence he had come.

He had been nearly ours and again we had lost him! I felt so badly that I
could not even swear and it wasn't the fact that Harry was a missionary
which kept me from it, either. Caldwell exclaimed just once, for his
disappointment was even more bitter than mine; he had been hunting this
same tiger off and on for six years.

It was useless for us to wait longer that evening and we pushed our way
through the sword grass to the entrance of the tunnel down which the tiger
had come. There in the soft earth were the great footprints where he had
crouched at the entrance to take a cautious survey before charging into the
open.

As we looked, Harry suddenly turned to me and said: "Roy, let's go into the
lair. There is just one chance in a thousand that we may get a shot." Now I
must admit that I was not very enthusiastic about that little excursion,
but in we went, crawling on our hands and knees up the narrow passage.
Every few feet we passed side branches from the main tunnel in any one of
which the tiger might easily have been lying in wait and could have killed
us as we passed. It was a foolhardy thing to do and I am free to admit that
I was scared. It was not long before Harry twisted about and said: "Roy, I
haven't lost any tigers in here; let's get out." And out we came faster
than we went in.

This was only one of the times when the "Great Invisible" was almost in our
hands. A few days later a Chinese found the blue tiger asleep under a rice
bank early in the afternoon. Frightened almost to death he ran a mile and a
half to our c