ter. It is their will
to cross the river. Hear, all of you loathly horrors, you lurking
terrors--make way. Who dares check the will of the king's son?"

Once there came a mighty swirl on their right hand--or right paw, if
you like--and the waters parted, with waves and the spouts of a geyser,
to give up the monstrous nightmare head of a hippopotamus. Once
something cold and leathery and ghastly touched the bottom of their
padded feet; and once--but this was too awful for any expression by
pen--something else, equally cold, but smooth, coiled, writhing, round
the king's son's left hind-leg, but providentially slid clear again, as
he kicked like a budding International.

Then came the ordeal. It arrived in the shape of two knobs, that just
were suddenly, and remained, motionless in the mocking moonlight, on
the surface of the water. It might have been merely some projection
from a half-sunken log. It might, but--well, there had grown in the
air an unspeakable stench of musk, and that wasn't there before the
knobs showed up.

Both lion cubs saw, both little royal ones smelt, and in some dim way,
warned probably by a terrible knowledge handed down to them from their
ancestors, both baby swimmers knew. Terror--real terror, of the
white-livered, surrender-or-stampede-blindly-at-any-price kind--could
never, it seems to me, come into those fine, regal eyes; but the
nearest approach that was possible occurred in that instant, and they
swam. Ah, how those infant lions swam! What had gone before was mere
paddling; and whether or not they had ever swum before in their short
lives--and I doubt it more than a little--there could be no question
about them now; they swam like practiced hands, and almost as fast.

Followed a pause, terrifying enough in all conscience, and then,
slowly, silently as a submarine's conning-tower goes under, so dived
those knobs, and vanished almost, not quite, without a ripple.

The cool night-air showed the breath coming from the broad, brave,
water-frilled cubs' heads in gasps. The silence gave away their
frantic panting. You could literally see them straining every baby
nerve and muscle, could note the jerks with which they fairly kicked
themselves along. And the opposite bank, a black wall of bush and
reeds, was very near now, yet far--oh, how far, to them!

Ssee-shhrr-r-rr-r-shrhh!

As a torpedo hurtles hissing along barely below the surface of the
water, so hurtled the head--the h