r
without taking or attempting to take some advantage from it.

She watched the lion narrowly. He could not see her without turning
his head more than halfway around. She would attempt a ruse. Silently
she rolled over in the direction of the nearest tree, and away from the
lion, until she lay again in the same position in which Numa had left
her, but a few feet farther from him.

Here she lay breathless watching the lion; but the beast gave no
indication that he had heard aught to arouse his suspicions. Again she
rolled over, gaining a few more feet and again she lay in rigid
contemplation of the beast's back.

During what seemed hours to her tense nerves, Jane Clayton continued
these tactics, and still the lion fed on in apparent unconsciousness
that his second prey was escaping him. Already the girl was but a few
paces from the tree--a moment more and she would be close enough to
chance springing to her feet, throwing caution aside and making a
sudden, bold dash for safety. She was halfway over in her turn, her
face away from the lion, when he suddenly turned his great head and
fastened his eyes upon her. He saw her roll over upon her side away
from him, and then her eyes were turned again toward him, and the cold
sweat broke from the girl's every pore as she realized that with life
almost within her grasp, death had found her out.

For a long time neither the girl nor the lion moved. The beast lay
motionless, his head turned upon his shoulders and his glaring eyes
fixed upon the rigid victim, now nearly fifty yards away. The girl
stared back straight into those cruel orbs, daring not to move even a
muscle.

The strain upon her nerves was becoming so unbearable that she could
scarcely restrain a growing desire to scream, when Numa deliberately
turned back to the business of feeding; but his back-layed ears
attested a sinister regard for the actions of the girl behind him.

Realizing that she could not again turn without attracting his
immediate and perhaps fatal attention, Jane Clayton resolved to risk
all in one last attempt to reach the tree and clamber to the lower
branches.

Gathering herself stealthily for the effort, she leaped suddenly to her
feet, but almost simultaneously the lion sprang up, wheeled and with
wide-distended jaws and terrific roars, charged swiftly down upon her.

Those who have spent lifetimes hunting the big game of Africa will tell
you that scarcely any other creature in t