As he thought, they were no eyes. He
had dreamed, that was all. So he took cedar boughs and threw them
on to the fire, where soon they flared gloriously, which done he
sat himself down again close to Wulf, who was lost in heavy
slumber.

The night was very still and the silence so deep that it pressed
upon him like a weight. He could bear it no longer, and rising,
began to walk up and down in front of the cave, drawing his sword
and holding it in his hand as sentries do. Masouda lay upon the
ground, with her head pillowed on a saddle-bag, and the moonlight
fell through the cedar boughs upon her face. Godwin stopped to
look at it, and wondered that he had never noted before how
beautiful she was. Perhaps it was but the soft and silvery light
which clothed those delicate features with so much mystery and
charm. She might be dead, not sleeping; but even as he thought
this, life came into her face, colour stole up beneath the pale,
olive-hued skin, the red lips opened, seeming to mutter some
words, and she stretched out her rounded arms as though to clasp
a vision of her dream.

Godwin turned aside; it seemed not right to watch her thus,
although in truth he had only come to know that she was safe. He
went back to the fire, and lifting a cedar bough, which blazed
like a torch in his left hand, was about to lay it down again on
the centre of the flame, when suddenly he heard the sharp and
terrible cry of a woman in an agony of pain or fear, and at the
same moment the horses and mules began to plunge and snort. In an
instant, the blazing bough still in his hand, he was back by the
cave, and lo! there before him, the form of Masouda, hanging from
its jaws, stood a great yellow beast, which, although he had
never seen its like, he knew must be a lioness. It was heading
for the cave, then catching sight of him, turned and bounded away
in the direction of the fire, purposing to reenter the wood
beyond.

But the woman in its mouth cumbered it, and running swiftly,
Godwin came face to face with the brute just opposite the fire.
He hurled the burning bough at it, whereon it dropped Masouda,
and rearing itself straight upon its hind legs, stretched out its
claws, and seemed about to fall on him. For this Godwin did not
wait. He was afraid, indeed, who had never before fought lions,
but he knew that he must do or die. Therefore he charged straight
at it, and with all the strength of his strong arm drove his long
sword into the