In a few minutes the procession appeared. Two or three matutinal
shikarries had gone out and come back, followed by the elephant, for
which Isaacs had sent the ryot at full speed the moment he was sure the
beast was dead. And so they came up the little hill behind the
dining-tent. The great tusker moved evenly along, bearing on the pad an
enormous yellow carcass, at which the little _mahout_ glanced
occasionally over his shoulder. Astride of the dead king sat the ryot,
who had directed Isaacs, crooning a strange psalm of victory in his
outlandish northern dialect, and occasionally clapping his hands over
his head with an expression of the most intense satisfaction I have ever
seen on a human face. The little band came to the middle of the camp
where the other tigers, now cut up and skinned elsewhere, had been
deposited the night before, and as the elephant knelt down, the
shikarries pulled the whole load over, pad, tiger, ryot and all, the
latter skipping nimbly aside. There he lay, the great beast that had
taken so many lives. We stretched him out and measured him--eleven feet
from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, all but an inch--as a
little more straightening fills the measure, eleven feet exactly.
Meanwhile, the servant and shikarries collected, and the noise of the
exploit went abroad.
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