sually purchased, but it had been my companion
from boyhood.

As I half arose the lion suddenly halted. He lifted his proud head
higher still in the air, and to my consternation half turned about and
looked straight in my direction. Then a sidewise and circuitous step or
two with his long reach of hinder leg, his wide and deep and flexible
flank; slow and kingly; splendid to see!

I sank down again, quite willing to let him interview the land of Arabs
in the black chasm below. They had spears and guns and everything down
there, everything but courage to face a lion with; and I was not going
to interfere with a fight which at the first had promised to be entirely
their own.

But this new movement of mine only accentuated his graceful motion. The
head now turned in the air, like the head of a man. I had time to note,
and I record it with certainty, that the massive head and the tumbled
mane towered straight above the shoulder. In fact, the lower parts of
the long mane looked most like the long shaggy beard of a man falling
down upon his broad breast. This I noted as he still kept on in his
sidewise circuit above us and around us on the yellow sand and under the
yellow moon. At times he was almost indistinct. But the carriage of that
head! There was a fine fascination in the lift and the movement and the
turn of that stately head that must ever be remembered, but can never be
described.

As he came nearer--for his sidewise walk was mainly in our direction--I
saw that he, too, was yellow, as if born of this yellow world in this
yellow night; but his was a more ponderous yellow; the yellow of red and
rusty old gold. At times he seemed almost black; and all the time
terrible.

In half a minute more he would be too close for comfort, and I decided
to arouse my companion. She wakened fully awake, if I may be allowed to
express a fact so awkwardly. You may know that there are people like
that.

"What is it?"

"A lion."

"Are you sure?"

"Certain."

"Where?"

"Right before your eyes."

"Why, I see nothing."

She had looked and was still looking far out against the yellow horizon
where her eyes had rested when she fell asleep. And as she looked, or
rather before I ventured to point her to the spot almost under the tomb
where the lion strode, he passed on and was by this time perhaps almost
quite under the great slab of granite where we rested.

I was about to whisper the fact in her ear when I fancied I felt t