apon to bear. Quiet as Ned and he had
been after the discovery, the jaguar seemed to feel that something was
wrong. Intent on his prey, for a time he had stood over it, gloating.
Now the brute glanced uneasily from side to side, its tail nervously
twitching, and it seemed trying to gain, by a sniffing of the air, some
information as to the direction in which danger lay, for Tom and Ned
had stooped low, concealing themselves by a screen of leaves.

The Indian, after his first frenzied outburst of fear, now lay quiet,
as though fearing to move, moaning in pain.

Suddenly the jaguar, attracted either by some slight movement on the
part of Ned or Tom, or perhaps by having winded them, turned his head
quickly and gazed with cruel eyes straight at the spot where the two
young men stood behind the bushes.

"He's seen us," whispered Ned.

"Yes," assented Tom. "And it's a perfect shot. Hope I don't miss!"

It was not like Tom Swift to miss, nor did he on this occasion. There
was a slight report from the electric rifle--a report not unlike the
crackle of the wireless--and the powerful projectile sped true to its
mark.

Straight through the throat and chest under the uplifted jaw of the
jaguar it went--through heart and lungs. Then with a great coughing,
sighing snarl the beast reared up, gave a convulsive leap forward
toward its newly discovered enemies, and fell dead in a limp heap, just
beyond the native over which it had been crouching before it delivered
the death stroke, now never to fall.

"You did it, Tom! You did it!" cried Ned, springing up from where he
had been kneeling to give his chum a better chance to shoot. "You did
it, and saved the man's life!" And Ned would have rushed out toward the
still twitching body.

"Just a minute!" interposed Tom. "Those beasts sometimes have as many
lives as a cat. I'll give it one more for luck." Another electric
projectile through the head of the jaguar produced no further effect
than to move the body slightly, and this proved conclusively that there
was no life left. It was safe to approach, which Tom and Ned did.

Their first thought, after a glance at the jaguar, was for the Indian.
It needed but a brief examination to show that he was not badly hurt.
The jaguar had leaped on him from a low tree as he passed under it, as
the boys learned afterward, and had crushed the man to earth by the
weight of the spotted body more than by a stroke of the paw.

The Ameri