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CHAPTER IV.

I half arose and felt for a trusty six-shooter. This pistol was not one that had been purchased for this or any other occasion, as the worthless pistols of the time are usually purchased, but it had been my companion from boyhood.

As I half arose the lion suddenly halted. He lifted his proud head higher still in the air, and to my consternation half turned about and looked straight in my direction. Then a sidewise and circuitous step or two with his long reach of hinder leg, his wide and deep and flexible flank; slow and kingly; splendid to see!

I sank down again, quite willing to let him interview the land of Arabs in the black chasm below. They had spears and guns and everything down there, everything but courage to face a lion with; and I was not going to interfere with a fight which at the first had promised to be entirely their own.

But this new movement of mine only accentuated his graceful motion. The head now turned in the air, like the head of a man. I had time to note, and I record it with certainty, that the massive head and the tumbled mane towered straight above the shoulder. In fact, the lower parts of the long mane looked most like the long shaggy beard of a man falling down upon his broad breast. This I noted as he still kept on in his sidewise circuit above us and around us on the yellow sand and under the yellow moon. At times he was almost indistinct. But the carriage of that head! There was a fine fascination in the lift and the movement and the turn of that stately head that must ever be remembered, but can never be described.

As he came nearer–for his sidewise walk was mainly in our direction–I saw that he, too, was yellow, as if born of this yellow world in this yellow night; but his was a more ponderous yellow; the yellow of red and rusty old gold. At times he seemed almost black; and all the time terrible.

In half a minute more he would be too close for comfort, and I decided to arouse my companion. She wakened fully awake, if I may be allowed to express a fact so awkwardly. You may know that there are people like that.

“What is it?”

“A lion.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain.”

“Where?”

“Right before your eyes.”

“Why, I see nothing.”

She had looked and was still looking far out against the yellow horizon where her eyes had rested when she fell asleep. And as she looked, or rather before I ventured to point her to the spot almost under the tomb where the lion strode, he passed on and was by this time perhaps almost quite under the great slab of granite where we rested.

I was about to whisper the fact in her ear when I fancied I felt the whole tomb tremble! Then it seemed to shake, or rather rumble again. Then again it rumbled. Then again! Then there was a roar that literally shook the sand. I heard the sand sift and rattle down like drops of rain from where it lay in the crevices as I listened to find whether or not he was moving forward toward the place by which we had ascended. He was surely moving forward. I felt rather than heard him move. I assert–and I must content myself for the present with merely asserting–that you can feel the movements of an animal under such circumstances. And I assert further that an animal, especially a wild beast, can feel your movements under almost any circumstances. The undeveloped senses deserve a book by themselves. But just now, with the largest lion I ever saw coming straight upon me, is hardly the time or place to write such a treatise.

Pistol in hand I sprang to the steep and rugged passage. And not a second too soon. His mighty head was almost on a level with the granite slab. And he was half crouching for a bound and a spring upward, which would perhaps land him in our faces. I could see–or did I feel–that his huge hinder feet were spread wide out and sunken in the sand with preparation to bend all their force toward bearing him upward in one mighty bound.