get. And the hunters, with their
guns and lanterns, came on through the jungle, looking for a lion to
kill.

CHAPTER V

NERO IN A TRAP

Tramp, tramp, tramp came the hunters through the jungle, flashing their
lights and looking for the lion which one of them had shot while the
hunter was hidden on the platform in a tree. But Nero, cowering away
back in the dark cave, kept very still and quiet, and he heard the
hunters walk right past his hiding place.

"Good!" thought the boy lion. "They haven't found me! I'm all right so
far; but I wonder how long I will have to stay here, and what the other
lions will do."

Poor Nero felt sick and in pain, and he was lonesome. It's as bad, I
think, for a jungle lion to be this way as it would be for your dog. But
still Nero did not dare come out of the cave for fear of the hunters.

"I'll just have to stay here," thought Nero, "until it's safe to come
out. Guess I might as well go to sleep."

So Nero curled up on the dried grass in the cave. He knew some other
lion once must have used the same cave for a sleeping place, as the
grass bed was made up just as Nero's was in the home cave.

"It's a good thing I found this place," thought Nero. "But I wish my
father and mother and Chet and Boo were here with me. Yes, and I even
wish Switchie were here. I wonder what he is doing!"

And so, wondering, Nero fell asleep in the jungle cave. How long he
slept he did not know, for it was as dark as night in the cavern, no
matter whether or not the sun shone outside, and Nero was far back from
the front door of the cave. When Nero awakened he tried to stand up and
walk.

But the moment he put his sore paw down on the stone floor of the cave,
he felt such a pain that he let out a howl and then a roar. But as soon
as he had done this he knew he had better keep quiet.

"For the hunters may be around the cave yet, outside, and may hear me,"
thought Nero. "But, oh, how my foot hurts!"

And indeed it did, for it was all swelled up because of the bullet that
had gone in from the hunter's gun. Nero could not step on his paw, and
he had to limp around on three legs.

"I can't go out of the cave while I'm this way," he thought. "I could
not run very fast through the jungle, and if the hunters were to see
me, lame as I am, they surely would catch me."

Nero knew something about the hunters in the African jungle, for he had
often heard his father and the other lions talk about the men