It was only
from the screams of the ladies, and their cries of 'Tiger!' that I
knew what had happened. I felt something heavy standing on me--so
heavy that I could hardly breathe; and indeed, I did not try to
breathe, for I knew many stories of tigers, and had heard that
sometimes, when a man shams being dead, the tiger will walk away and
kill someone else.
"The tiger was keeping up an angry growl, and I felt that, unless it
took its paw off me, I should soon die, when I heard a shot, and a
fierce growl from the tiger, and then the weight was gone, and I think
I fainted. When I came round, I was lying where I fell, for many of
the ladies were insensible, and everyone was too busy with them to
think anything of me.
"When I got up, one of the other slave girls, who had been brave
enough to look out of the window, told me that it had been killed by
two young men, one of whom must have been the one who had fired the
shot in at the window. I went and looked out, and saw it lying there.
After that every one talked, and laughed, and cried, and then the
sultan's chief wife said that everyone must make a present to the
young men who had saved us, and that each one ought to give one of her
best jewels.
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