ale face
crowned with its bright curls (for Leo is six feet two high), and I saw
that he was fighting with a desperate abandonment and energy that was
at once splendid and hideous to behold. He drove his knife through one
man--they were so close to and mixed up with him that they could not
get at him to kill him with their big spears, and they had no knives or
sticks. The man fell, and then somehow the knife was wrenched from his
hand, leaving him defenceless, and I thought the end had come. But no;
with a desperate effort he broke loose from them, seized the body of the
man he had just slain, and lifting it high in the air hurled it right at
the mob of his assailants, so that the shock and weight of it swept
some five or six of them to the earth. But in a minute they were all up
again, except one, whose skull was smashed, and had once more fastened
upon him. And then slowly, and with infinite labour and struggling,
the wolves bore the lion down. Once even then he recovered himself, and
felled an Amahagger with his fist, but it was more than man could do to
hold his own for long against so many, and at last he came crashing down
upon the rock floor, falling as an oak falls, and bearing with him to
the earth all those who clung about him. They gripped him by his arms
and legs, and then cleared off his body.

"A spear," cried a voice--"a spear to cut his throat, and a vessel to
catch his blood."

I shut my eyes, for I saw the man coming with a spear, and myself, I
could not stir to Leo's help, for I was growing weak, and the two men on
me were not yet dead, and a deadly sickness overcame me.

Then suddenly there was a disturbance, and involuntarily I opened my
eyes again, and looked towards the scene of murder. The girl Ustane had
thrown herself on Leo's prostrate form, covering his body with her body,
and fastening her arms about his neck. They tried to drag her from
him, but she twisted her legs round his, and hung on like a bulldog, or
rather like a creeper to a tree, and they could not. Then they tried to
stab him in the side without hurting her, but somehow she shielded him,
and he was only wounded.

At last they lost patience.

"Drive the spear through the man and the woman together," said a voice,
the same voice that had asked the questions at that ghastly feast, "so
of a verity shall they be wed."

Then I saw the man with the weapon straighten himself for the effort. I
saw the cold steel gleam on high, and