out in all its details.

I drank all I could hold of my watered wine, left my cloak by the kidskin,
tucked a small packet of food into my belt-wallet, and raced down, the
steep slope of the mountainside to the north of the crag, leaping from
rock to rock under the huge forest trees. I reached the gentler slopes
near the highway and gained the top of the knoll. Selinus was in plain
view, grazing among his brides, and by good luck, all were headed towards
me. I stood on the summit of the knoll and waved my arms. Selinus caught
sight of me and galloped joyously down the slope of the pasture towards
me. When he was near I ran towards him down the slope of the knoll, being
careful that he should not lose sight of me. My luck held and he and I
approached the highway and each, other where there was a comfortable
interval between the lion's cage on the wagon which had been passing when
I topped the knoll and the leading yoke of the team tugging the wagon next
behind. The wind, also, was towards me, so that Selinus did not smell the
lions till he and I met in the highway and I had mounted him. Like a
hunting dog bounding over a fallen tree Selinus had leapt the tall thorn
hedge which bordered the highway to keep stock off it and in the meadow.

Once I was on his back we set off northward at full gallop, which almost
at once quickened into a maddened run. He had shied violently as we passed
the first cage and he winded the lion in it, but I stuck on him. Also I
stuck on at each, less violent sideways lurch as we passed cage after
cage: tiger, panther, leopard, hyenas or lion; all smelt equally
terrifying to him, but he only ran faster and his terror went into speed
ahead rather than into leaps aside.

When we reached the crossroad, up which the constabulary had turned, the
procurator's carriage was still somewhere up the highway; I had not seen
it since I left the top of the crag. The train of beast-wagons seemed
endless.

Into the crossroad we turned and up it Selinus tore. I chuckled. No road-
police, no matter how young, nimble and long-winded, could maintain a
double-quick any distance on that up-slope. Selinus mounted the hills like
a grayhound after a hare. We were sure to overtake the detachment soon.
They could not have gone far.

Overtake them we did and the maddened run at which Selinus scaled those
steep hills caught their officer's attention. I had rehearsed what I meant
to say and wasted no words. What I said con