e way."

"And may I pluck just those flowers?" she asked, pointing at a cusso
bush, covered with an immense number of rosy flowers.

"You may."

Saying this, he turned her about, pointed out to her once more for
greater certainty the clump of trees from which the smoke of the camp
issued and from which resounded the King's trumpeting, after which he
plunged into the high jungle growing on the brink of the ravine.

But he had not gone a hundred paces when he was seized by uneasiness.
"Why, it was stupid on my part," he thought, "to permit Nell to walk
alone in Africa. Stupid, stupid. She is such a child! I ought not to
leave her for a step unless the King is with her. Who knows what may
happen! Who knows whether under that rosy bush some kind of snake is
not lying! Big apes can leap out of the ravine and carry her away from
me or bite her. God forbid! I committed a terrible folly."

And his uneasiness changed into anger at himself, and at the same time
into a terrible fear. Not reflecting any longer, he turned around as if
stung by a sudden evil presentiment. Walking hurriedly, he held the
rifle ready to fire, with that great dexterity which he had acquired
through daily hunting, and advanced amid the thorny mimosas without any
rustle, exactly like a panther when stealing to a herd of antelopes at
night. After a while he shoved his head out of the high underwood,
glanced about and was stupefied.

Nell stood under a cusso bush with her little hand outstretched; the
rosy flowers, which she had dropped in terror, lay at her feet, and
from the distance of about twenty paces a big tawny-gray beast was
creeping towards her amid the low grass.

Stas distinctly saw his green eyes fastened upon the little maid's
face, which was as white as chalk, his narrow head with flattened ears,
his shoulder-blades raised upward on account of his lurking and
creeping posture, his long body and yet longer tail, the end of which
he moved with a light, cat-like motion. One moment more one spring and
it would be all over with Nell.

At this sight the boy, hardened and inured to danger, in the twinkling
of an eye understood that if he did not regain self-command, if he did
not muster courage, if he shot badly and only wounded the assailant,
even though heavily, the little maid must perish. But he could master
himself to that degree that under the influence of these thoughts his
hands and limbs suddenly became calm like steel springs. With