FullReads

Why, I could feel his fearful rage as he now walked on and around the edge of that granite slab. At length he came opposite to where I lay crouching on the farther edge of my column. He passed on without so much as turning his eyes in my direction. And yet I felt, I felt and knew, as distinctly as if he could have talked and told me, that he was carefully measuring the distance.

When the lion, in his stately round, came to the narrow pass by which he had ascended he paused an instant, and half lowered his head.

Ah, how devoutly I did pray that he would be generous enough to descend to the sands and gracefully present us with his absence.

But no! Lifting his huge head even higher in the air than before, he now passed on hurriedly, came on around to where in his stately majesty he stood with quivering flank and flashing eye almost within reach of me. Yet he still disdained to even so much as look at me. His head was far above me as I crouched there on the farther edge of my column; his flashing eyes were lifted and looking far above me and beyond me. Maybe he was on the lookout over the desert for the coming of his companion.

Soon, however, he set his huge paws on the very edge of the great slab on which he stood, and then suddenly threw his right paw out toward me and against the edge of my column with the force and velocity of a catapult!

I heard the sharp, keen claws strike and scrape on the granite as if they had been hooks of steel.

Then he threw himself on his breast, and hitching himself a little to one side, he threw his right paw so far that it landed full in the center of my column’s top and tore a bit of my coat sleeve. Then he hitched his huge body a little farther on over the edge and again threw his huge paw right at my face. It fell short of its mark only a few inches, as it seemed to me. But, having hastily gathered in my garments, his claws did not find anything to fasten on and they drew back empty.

At this point three dusky etchings stood out against the golden east on the yellow sands, and looked intently at us with their enormous heads high in the air. And now the beast slowly arose and moved on. A lion’s head seems always disproportionately large, but when he is exercising for an appetite to eat you it looks large indeed.

The monster who was occupying the platform with us surely saw his followers; indeed, he must have seen them long before; but his unbending dignity seemed to forbid that he should take any heed of them.

The new-born hope that he would descend and join his followers died as he came on around.

And now something strange and notable transpired. This one incident is my excuse for thus elaborating this otherwise passive and tediously dull sketch of this night. I had risen to my feet, and as the lion came on around, this woman, with a force that was irresistible, sprang to my side, thrust me behind her, and stepping forward with a single spring, she stood on the edge of the column nearest to the lion.

I would have followed, but that same force, which I can now understand was a mental force and not at all a physical force, held me hard and fast to where I stood.

She had let her robe fall as she sprang forward and now stood only as the hand of God had fashioned her; a snow-white silhouette of perfect comeliness against the terrible and bloody mouth and tossing mane of the lion. She leaned forward as he came on around and close to the edge of his slab. She looked him firmly and steadily in the face, her wondrous eyes, her midnight eyes of all Israel, the child of the wilderness, had once more met the lion of the desert as of old.