uicy meat of Pacco, the zebra. Increasing
his gait but slightly he followed the tortuous windings of the
trail until suddenly just before him, where the trail wound about
the bole of a huge tree, he saw a young buck moving slowly ahead
of him.

Numa judged the distance with his keen eyes, glowing now like two
terrible spots of yellow fire in his wrinkled, snarling face. He
could do it--this time he was sure. One terrific roar that would
paralyze the poor creature ahead of him into momentary inaction,
and a simultaneous charge of lightning-like rapidity and Numa, the
lion, would feed. The sinuous tail, undulating slowly at its tufted
extremity, whipped suddenly erect. It was the signal for the charge
and the vocal organs were shaped for the thunderous roar when, as
lightning out of a clear sky, Sheeta, the panther, leaped suddenly
into the trail between Numa and the deer.

A blundering charge made Sheeta, for with the first crash of his
spotted body through the foliage verging the trail, Bara gave a
single startled backward glance and was gone.

The roar that was intended to paralyze the deer broke horribly from
the deep throat of the great cat--an angry roar of rage against
the meddling Sheeta who had robbed him of his kill, and the charge
that was intended for Bara was launched against the panther; but
here too Numa was doomed to disappointment, for with the first notes
of his fearsome roar Sheeta, considering well the better part of
valor, leaped into a near-by tree.

A half-hour later it was a thoroughly furious Numa who came
unexpectedly upon the scent of man. Heretofore the lord of the jungle
had disdained the unpalatable flesh of the despised man-thing. Such
meat was only for the old, the toothless, and the decrepit who no
longer could make their kills among the fleet-footed grass-eaters.
Bara, the deer, Horta, the boar, and, best and wariest, Pacco, the
zebra, were for the young, the strong, and the agile, but Numa was
hungry-hungrier than he ever had been in the five short years of
his life.

What if he was a young, powerful, cunning, and ferocious beast?
In the face of hunger, the great leveler, he was as the old, the
toothless, and the decrepit. His belly cried aloud in anguish and
his jowls slavered for flesh. Zebra or deer or man, what mattered
it so that it was warm flesh, red with the hot juices of life?
Even Dango, the hyena, eater of offal, would, at the moment, have
seemed a tidbit to Numa.

T