other, we
lifted him slowly level with our shoulders, level with our heads, and
just there the tiger gave a vicious growl, and the two men lowered
their end. That made him work up toward my end, and in a second I had
Rajah's face close to my face, and both my hands occupied with the
ladder. I couldn't do a thing, and the only question was what _he_ would
do. He looked at me, looked at the elephant, and then struck out hard
and quick, missing me only by a hair; in fact, he didn't miss me
entirely, for one of his claws just reached the corner of my eye--see, I
have the scar still. But he jumped on the elephant, and we kept the
mastery that day. Still, it was bad business, and I saw we couldn't take
such chances again. That was Rajah's last ride."

V

WE SPEND A NIGHT AMONG WILD BEASTS AND SEE THE DANGEROUS LION BLACK
PRINCE

THE general opinion among wild-beast tamers is that the tiger is more to
be feared than the lion. The one will kill a man as easily as the other,
but the lion gives fair warning of his murderous intention by rushing at
his victim with a roar, whereas the tiger, true representative of the
cat tribe, sneaks up with semblance of affectionate purr, only to set
his fangs suddenly into the very life of his victim. The lion has
somewhat greater muscular power than the tiger, but the latter has
greater quickness.

The tamer Philadelphia told me once that he had seen a lion fasten his
fangs in the shoulder of a dead horse and drag the carcass, weighing
perhaps a thousand pounds, a distance of twenty feet. If a lion and a
strong horse were to pull in opposite directions, the horse would drag
the lion backward with comparative ease; but if the lion were hitched
behind the horse, facing in the same direction, and were allowed to
exert his strength in backing, he could easily pull the horse down upon
his haunches, so much greater is his strength when exerted backward from
the hind legs than in forward pulling.

A lion springing through the air from a distance of six feet would knock
down a horse or bullock with a single blow of his forearm, backed by the
momentum of his three hundred pounds' weight, and a full-grown lion in
the jungles will jump twenty-five or thirty feet on the level from a
running start. In captivity the same lion would clear a distance about
half as great. A lion can jump over a fence eight or ten feet high, but
not at a bound. He catches first with his forelegs, and drags his bo