fertile imagination pictured lurking
shapes crouched behind the wall of tangled underbrush lining either side
of the trail.

* * * * *

Without warning, the narrow path debouched into a fair-sized clearing,
through the center of which moved the sluggish waters of a shallow
stream, its low banks covered with reeds.

Compared with the dull half-light of jungle depths, the glade seemed
bright as midday, although the sun had already dipped behind the
towering rampart of trees to the west. Trakor's heart swelled with
renewed confidence and his step was almost jaunty as he moved through
the knee-deep grasses and rustling reeds to the river bank.

Now he knew exactly where he was. Another hour at a half-trot would
bring him to the caves of Gerdak. The jungle wasn't such a fearsome
place after all! He had spent an entire day in the open and not once
come across anything more dangerous than monkeys and birds. Tomorrow he
would go out again to hunt, nor would he return empty-handed a second
time.

Dropping to his hands and knees at the river's edge, he drank deeply of
the brackish waters. Rising, he took up his spear, waded the ankle-deep
stream and trotted lightly onward, his goal the break in the opposite
wall of trees which marked the continuation of the same trail he had
been following.

Thus did young Trakor betray his abysmal ignorance of the jungle and its
inhabitants. No experienced wayfarer of the wild places would have
approached that opening without the utmost caution; for it is often just
such a setting the great cats choose as a place to lie in wait for game.

The slender youth was within a few feet of the bole of a mammoth tree
that marked the trail's entrance, when a sudden rustling amid a clump of
grasses to one side of the path brought him to a startled halt.

Before Trakor could recover from his initial shock, those trembling
grasses parted, and with majestic deliberation, Sadu, the lion, stepped
into the trail less than twenty paces from the paralyzed youngster.

Huge, impressive, his sleek, tawny coat and bristling mane shimmering in
the fading sunlight, his tufted, sinuous tail moving in jerky
undulations, stood the jungle king, his round yellow eyes fastened
hypnotically on his intended prey.

Trakor knew that only seconds remained for him in this life, that within
fleeting moments he must go down to a horrible death beneath rending
fangs.

And with that knowledge