icult, for we watched not
one but several simultaneous scenes. For instance, there were the lions,
which did not behave as might have been expected. I thought that they
would rush through the doors and bound upon the victim, but whether it
was because they had already been fed that afternoon or because they
thought that a single human being was not worth the trouble, they acted
differently.

Through the open gates they came, in two indolent yellow lines, male
lions, female lions, half-grown lions, cub lions that cuffed each other
in play, in all perhaps fifty or sixty of them. Of these only two or
three looked towards the Professor, for none of them ran or galloped,
while the rest spread over the den, some of them vanishing into the
shadow at the edge of the surrounding cliff where the moonlight could
not reach.

Here one of them, at any rate, must have travelled fast enough, for it
seemed only a few seconds later that we heard a terrific yell beneath
us, and craning over the rock I saw the Prince Joshua running up the
ladder more swiftly than ever did any London lamplighter when I was a
boy.

But quickly as he came, the long, thin, sinuous thing beneath came
quicker. It reared itself on its hind legs, it stretched up a great
paw--I can see the gleaming claws in it now--and struck or hooked at
poor Joshua. The paw caught him in the small of the back, and seemed
to pin him against the ladder. Then it was drawn slowly downward,
and heaven! how Joshua howled. Up came the other paw to repeat the
operation, when, stretching myself outward and downward, with an Abati
holding me by the ankles, I managed to shoot the beast through the
head so that it fell all of a heap, taking with it a large portion of
Joshua's nether garments.

A few seconds later he was among us, and tumbled groaning into a corner,
where he lay in charge of some of the mountaineers, for I had no time to
attend to him just then.

When the smoke cleared at length, I saw that Japhet had reached Higgs,
and was gesticulating to him to run, while two lions, a male and a
female, stood at a little distance, regarding the pair in an interested
fashion. Higgs, after some brief words of explanation, pointed to his
knee. Evidently he was lamed and could not run. Japhet, rising to the
occasion, pointed to his back, and bent down. Higgs flung himself upon
it, and was hitched up like a sack of flour. The pair began to advance
toward the ladder, Japhet carrying Higgs