to his
hands and knees, feeling that it must be that way or nohow, though fast
growing desperate enough to rise to his feet and run.

A minute's anxious reflection brought the feeling that this would be a
mad act, and might rouse the lion into following him, so he kept
steadily getting farther and farther away, and more and more
foreshortened, as the artists term it, till he was pretty well end on to
the lion, and he felt that he must present a singular aspect to the
monster if it looked across the plain.

"I shall never do it," muttered Dyke. "Poor old Breezy! he was
frightened. I can't blame him, but I don't get any nearer. He's going
on as fast as I am, and I shall be obliged to get up and run."

But he did not. He kept up the uneasy crawling, putting hundred-yard
space after hundred-yard space between him and the fire, while, when he
did glance back, it was after dropping flat behind some bush and raising
his head till he could see the eland lying like a low hummock or patch
of bush, and with the lion growing less distinct.

On he went again, refreshed by the trifling rest, but far more by the
fact that he was really getting more distant from the great danger. For
it was in vain to try to assure himself that as the lion did not molest
him before it had fed, it was far less likely to do so now.

As he crawled onward, wishing he could progress like the baboons which
haunted some of the stony kopjes in the neighbourhood, he tried to think
how long it would be before he overtook the cob, and in spite of the
danger and excitement he could not help smiling, for his position
reminded him of one of the old problems at school about if A goes so
many yards an hour and B so many, for twenty-four hours, how long will
it be before B is overtaken by A?

"A fellow can't do that without pen, ink, and paper," he said to
himself. "It's too big a sum to do on sand, and, besides, I don't know
how fast I am going, nor B for Breezy either. But oh, how hot I am!"

At last he could bear it no longer; he was apparently getting no nearer
the cob, but he certainly must be, he felt, sufficiently far from the
lion to make it safe for him to rise and trot after the nag. He had his
whistle, and if he could make Breezy hear, the horse would come to him.
But he dared not use that yet; besides, he was too far away.

At last he did rise, gazed timorously back, and then started onward at a
steady trot--a means of progression which see