empt to penetrate the half lights, the duskinesses of the closed-in
thicket not over fifteen feet away! And then the movement forward of two
feet would bring into our field of vision an entirely new set of tiny
vistas and possible lurking places.

Speaking for myself, I was keyed up to a tremendous tension. I stared
until my eyes ached; every muscle and nerve was taut. Everything
depended on seeing the beast promptly, and firing quickly. With the
manifest advantage of being able to see us, she would spring to battle
fully prepared. A yellow flash and a quick shot seemed about to size up
that situation. Every few moments, I remember, I surreptitiously
held out my hand to see if the constantly growing excitement and the
long-continued strain had affected its steadiness.

The combination of heat and nervous strain was very exhausting. The
sweat poured from me; and as F. passed me I saw the great drops standing
out on his face. My tongue got dry, my breath came laboriously. Finally
I began to wonder whether physically I should be able to hold out. We
had been crawling, it seemed, for hours. I dared not look back, but we
must have come a good quarter mile. Finally F. stopped.

"I'm all in for water," he gasped in a whisper.

Somehow that confession made me feel a lot better. I had thought that
I was the only one. Cautiously we settled back on our heels. Memba Sasa
and Simba wiped the sweat from their faces. It seemed that they too had
found the work severe. That cheered me up still more.

Simba grinned at us, and, worming his way backward with the sinuousity
of a snake, he disappeared in the direction from which we had come.
F. cursed after him in a whisper both for departing and for taking the
risk. But in a moment he had returned carrying two canteens of blessed
water. We took a drink most gratefully.

I glanced at my watch. It was just under two hours since I had fired
my shot. I looked back. My supposed quarter mile had shrunk to not over
fifty feet!

After resting a few moments longer, we again took up our systematic
advance. We made perhaps another fifty feet. We were ascending a very
gentle slope. F. was for the moment ahead. Right before us the lion
growled; a deep rumbling like the end of a great thunder roll, fathoms
and fathoms deep, with the inner subterranean vibrations of a heavy
train of cars passing a man inside a sealed building. At the same moment
over F.'s shoulder I saw a huge yellow head rise up,