mistakable now--past doubt a bone pile
of some kind in there--and Nels had followed Tiger to the door.

Skag sat down upon a stone a little below and mopped his forehead, with
a smile at the Dane. For ten minutes he sat there. He thought of the
first time he had ever entered a tiger cage as a mere boy, way back in
the Middle West of the States, travelling with the circus. A bored
show tiger in that cage, and he had blinked unconcernedly at the boy.
Years of circus life had atrophied that tiger's organs of resentment.
Miles and miles of the public stream had passed his cage with awe,
speculating upon the great cat's ferocity. Skag had merely to learn
after that, the trick of it all--that one's perfect self-control not
only soothes but disarms most normal beasts. Skag had cultivated such
self-control in recent years to a degree that made him the astonishment
of many Hindu minds. India had shown him that the attainment of this
sort of poise is a stage of the same mastery that the mystics are out
after--to gain complete command of the menagerie in one's own insides.
Hundreds of times after that, night and day, in storm, in sultry
weather, Skag had entered the cages of all kinds of animals in all
their moods.

His first adventure in India came back, when with his friend Cadman he
had fallen into the pit trap and the grand young male tiger had tumbled
after them. Skag had prevailed upon the nervy Cadman to sit tight and
not to shoot, against all that the writer man knew; also he had
appeared to prevail upon the tiger to keep his side of the pit until
they were rescued. And now Skag recalled the big tiger that had lain
on the river margin near the Monkey Glen while he had told Carlin that
he had never really seen what a woman was like before. The presence of
the big sleepy cat down among the wet foliage had nerved him and called
out all his strength for that romantic crisis.

He thought of the moment under the poised head of the great serpent in
the place of fear in the grass jungle; and of the coming of Nut Kut,
the incomparable black elephant, whom he had forced to listen in spite
of the red hell in the untamable eyes. Always between and in and
round, his thoughts were of Carlin--her voice, her presence, the
curious art of her ministration and the utterly wise lure of her heart.
Even now he couldn't quite be calm under the whip of memory of the
afternoon of the cobra fight. The whole panorama might have been nam