. A tropical storm
was approaching.

The voice of the lion told that he was doing the same. Every moment it
could be heard, nearer, and more intensely terrifying.

Which of them would come first,--the storm or the beast of prey? It
seemed a question between them. Already heavy rain-drops were plashing
around him. Thirsting as he was, this would have been a welcome sound,
but for that other that proceeded from the throat of the lion.

The hunter's familiarity with the habits of the great cat gave him a
good idea of how he might expect the latter to approach him. There
would be a simultaneous bound and roar, followed by the mangling of a
body and the crunching of bones, which he could hardly doubt would be
his own.

Willem was not often tortured with fear, though at that moment he was
not free from apprehension. Still, he awaited the event with calmness.

Most people, when frightened, feel an irresistible desire to make a
sudden departure from the place where they have been seized with the
malady; but this was not the case with Groot Willem. He had the sense
to know that by making a move he might run into the jaws of the very
danger he wished to avoid; for the roar of the lion gives no guide to
the direction the animal may be in. Besides, he was not yet so badly
scared as to think of abandoning the prize he had taken such trouble to
retain.

The rain now came down, and for some time continued to fall in torrents.
Brief periods of darkness were followed by gleams of electric light,
dazzling in its brilliancy.

In a few minutes the fiercest of the storm appeared to be over, and
then, as a wind-up to it, there came a long continued blaze of
lightning, more brilliant than ever, and a peal of thunder louder than
any that had preceded it.

By that flash Willem was nearly blinded. The electric shock seemed to
strike every nerve in his body, and, had he been standing erect, he
certainly would have fallen to the ground. The instant after, so
intensely black was all around that he might well have thought for a
moment or two that the flash had destroyed his power of vision; but
there was another thought on his mind more terrible than this.

When the heavens and earth were illumed by that flash, he had obtained a
momentary glimpse of an object that drove from his mind every thought
but that of immediate death. There was a lion within ten feet of him,
just crouching for a spring! Willem would have rushed out of