* * * * *

Dylara, only a few yards from the trail's mouth, came to a sudden halt.
Years of elbow rubbing with the jungle and its inhabitants reminded her
that trail mouths a short distance from water were where Sadu and Tarlok
were most likely to be lying in wait for game. And this was the time of
day the meat-eaters began their search for food.

Standing there near the clearing's edge, she peered intently at the
waist-high grasses shrouding the boles of trees on both sides of the
trail. A light breeze stirred them softly, and at one spot directly
beneath a jungle patriarch's broad boughs, a trailing vine swayed in
unison with the wind.

But wait! That vine was quivering unsteadily, then moving _against_ the
breeze! Instantly Dylara's eyes were fixed on that spot. Little by
little her searching gaze made out the outlines of some amorphous shape
crouching motionless behind a curtain of grasses.

Imagination? Perhaps, she told herself. But the jungle dweller without
it soon left his bones to bleach along the trails. Cautiously she took a
backward step ... another, and yet a third.

The long grasses at that point were very still now as the breeze died.
Was she being overly careful--running from shadows? A tree stump, a
fallen log--any of several explanations would cover that motionless bulk
lying there.

Suddenly the brooding silence was torn apart by a thunderous roar and
Sadu, the lion, aware that his prey was on the point of escape, sprang
from the depths of foliage and bore down upon her with express-train
speed, snarling and growling as he came.

Even as Dylara turned to flee, she knew her life was finished, that
nothing could save her now. Any hope that she would reach safety among
the trees was futile; the nearest was long yards away and Sadu would
have buried his talons and fangs in her defenseless flesh while she was
still far short of escape.

Yet so strong was the urge of self-preservation that she was racing like
the wind for sanctuary despite the uselessness of flight; while behind
her Sadu was cutting down the gap between them as though the Cro-Magnard
princess were standing still.

The knowledge that his prey was inescapably doomed did not cause Sadu to
loiter along the way or grow over-confident. He judged the intervening
space with a practiced eye; and, at precisely the right moment, he
launched his great, heavy-maned body in the final Gargantuan leap that
would end fu