Part 25

A pariah dog, lean and yellow, came to eye them furtively through the chinks of the corrugated iron, and the horses snorted and stamped in their pickets, as the night breeze carried to them their scent.

Time passed, and the shrill voices of the women-folk ceased, the deep mutter of the men died gradually down, the lights faded, the scene was lit up only here and there by the sudden glow of a fire kicked into blaze by a sentry, but the song of the mosquitoes never ceased.

Then arose and uprose the strange, uncanny voices of the night, which, taken together, made up a background to the great silence which they seemed to accentuate. And the king's son bounded again. They were to him as a mighty call, those voices, from his own land--the land of the wilderness.

The rumbling thunder of his father's rage, breathing of death and destruction, had ceased now; but there were plenty more sounds, and the king's son, listening, knew them all. The distant "Qua-ha-ha!" of a troop of zebras going to drink; the peculiar snort of an impala antelope, scenting danger; the far-away drumming of hoofs of a startled herd of hartebeests; the bleat of an eland calf, pulled down by who knows what; the "Hoot-toot!" of a hippopotamus, going out to grass; the sudden shrill "Ya-ya-ya-ya!" of a black-backed jackal close at hand; the yarly, snarly whines of a hunting leopard; the snap of a crocodile's jaws, somewhere down in the nearby river; and, last, but by no means least in ghostliness, the awful rising "Who-oo!" followed by a sudden mad chorus of maniacal laughter, which told that somewhere a gathering of hyenas were--at their work!

The king's son was moving about the prison now, examining what he could see--especially of the walls--with his wonderful, proud eyes, and what he could not with whiskers and nose. He made no sound, of course--not so much as a whisper; and when his sister joined him, they were simply intangible, half-guessed shapes, drifting--there is no other word for it--through the gloom.

A man, even a colored one, might look long into that inclosure and, unless he caught the sudden smolder at the back of their eyes, never tell where they were. Indeed, the inclosure was in pitch-darkness itself, by reason of its high "tin" walls; and even when a weird yellow moon came and hung itself up to add to the general uncanniness of the scene, the prison of the king's son showed only like a well of ink.

Suddenly the silence and the voices of the crickets were broken into by the sound of scramblings by night. A nightjar fled from the tree overhead to the accompaniment of strange noises; and an unseen jackal, who had crept up to the very huts pessimistically, in search of anything awful, or offal, fled with a startled scurry. Apparently something with claws was trying to scrape away the corrugated iron.

Came then a scrawling scrape, and a thump. Then silence. But after a bit the noises began again--a fresh lot, and more violent. The pariah dog, who had come to investigate with his tail in the air, went away again, and quickly, with his tail between his legs; and in the same moment the king's son's head appeared over the top of the corrugated iron wall in silhouette against the staring, surprised moon.

Of course, and quite naturally, every sentry was asleep, or else even they could not have failed to realize that the sounds of desperate scratchings that followed were no ordinary phenomena, and might bear looking into.

Presently the king's son's body followed his head, and he sat for a moment, balancing clumsily on that narrow top, before vanishing suddenly, to the accompaniment of a heavy thump that was the last sound he made in the place.

Further and even more frantic scratchings followed, and anon the king's daughter, who certainly meant to die rather than be left alone in the hands of the foe, eclipsed the moon. A pause, and she, too, vanished downwards with a thump that was the last sound she made there in that place also.

A minute later, and she had joined her brother under the thorny guard of a mimosa.

For a moment or two the pair stood rigid as rock carvings, looking back, crouched a little, and deadly silent. Then the king's son turned and led the way to the river at a loping trot, and his sister followed in his tracks. They shook the dust--literally and daintily as a cat shakes dew from her feet--of the hated captors' fastness from their feet in little momentary halts as they went, and the place knew them no more.

But there is one point I should like to insert here. Go and try to climb over a corrugated iron wall nine feet high, and with nothing but the bare earth to take off from, and see how you succeed. Further, when doing it, remember that these royal children were so young as to be little more than babies. Then you may tell how they accomplished the feat. I do not know exactly to this day.

It is to be hoped that by this time everybody will be aware that the king's son and the king's daughter were lion cubs, the survivors, therefore the strongest and the fittest, of three lion cubs in a litter. It required, you will admit, some resource, courage, and intelligence to do what they had already done, considering their age; but the worst was to come. Having got out of the frying-pan, they must now face the fire, and be quick about it, too, if they didn't want to be traced and recaptured at dawn.

Arrived at the river's edge, they stopped and stared out across the dark swirls and unknown, cold depths. Lion cubs, as also the young of every other African animal, must assuredly be born with an instinctive and a very lively dread of all rivers and their occupants. Any horrible invention of death, they must have known, might be expected to lurk there, ready waiting for them in that underworld of dark waters; but if they felt fear, they never showed it, and the pride of their birth held true. Their hesitation was only momentary. The terror had to be faced, bravely or fearfully, as they would, but still faced, and bravely it was done.

Slowly and coolly the king's son waded out into the black, chill waters. He felt the current, which was strong, plucking like invisible great fingers at his legs; he felt the cold strike through tawny, spotted fur and skin to his belly, but he never looked back. His feet were whirled from under him; he trod upon nothing, cold, cold emptiness, and that was enough to terrify any grown beast, let alone a baby; but he struck out right manfully, and his fine eyes and face took on that regal expression of haughty determination that you see in the face only of King Leo himself and his mate, and in no other beast in the world. And the king's daughter unhesitatingly followed--a real princess, by gad, sirs!

Steadily the pair swam, heading instinctively, one presumes, up-stream, to counteract the drift of the ever-shouldering current. There was, perhaps, from two to five feet of water under their sturdy paws; but had it been twenty or thirty, I, personally, believe it would have made no difference. There were probably also other things under and around their sturdy paws--things very much worse and less innocent than any water--things they must have, dimly, at any rate, if not acutely, been aware of in an inbred sort of way; but they made no difference either.

"Make way for the king's son and the king's daughter. It is their will to cross the river. Hear, all of you loathly horrors, you lurking terrors--make way. Who dares check the will of the king's son?"

Once there came a mighty swirl on their right hand--or right paw, if you like--and the waters parted, with waves and the spouts of a geyser, to give up the monstrous nightmare head of a hippopotamus. Once something cold and leathery and ghastly touched the bottom of their padded feet; and once--but this was too awful for any expression by pen--something else, equally cold, but smooth, coiled, writhing, round the king's son's left hind-leg, but providentially slid clear again, as he kicked like a budding International.

Then came the ordeal. It arrived in the shape of two knobs, that just were suddenly, and remained, motionless in the mocking moonlight, on the surface of the water. It might have been merely some projection from a half-sunken log. It might, but--well, there had grown in the air an unspeakable stench of musk, and that wasn't there before the knobs showed up.

Both lion cubs saw, both little royal ones smelt, and in some dim way, warned probably by a terrible knowledge handed down to them from their ancestors, both baby swimmers knew. Terror--real terror, of the white-livered, surrender-or-stampede-blindly-at-any-price kind--could never, it seems to me, come into those fine, regal eyes; but the nearest approach that was possible occurred in that instant, and they swam. Ah, how those infant lions swam! What had gone before was mere paddling; and whether or not they had ever swum before in their short lives--and I doubt it more than a little--there could be no question about them now; they swam like practiced hands, and almost as fast.

Followed a pause, terrifying enough in all conscience, and then, slowly, silently as a submarine's conning-tower goes under, so dived those knobs, and vanished almost, not quite, without a ripple.

The cool night-air showed the breath coming from the broad, brave, water-frilled cubs' heads in gasps. The silence gave away their frantic panting. You could literally see them straining every baby nerve and muscle, could note the jerks with which they fairly kicked themselves along. And the opposite bank, a black wall of bush and reeds, was very near now, yet far--oh, how far, to them!

Ssee-shhrr-r-rr-r-shrhh!

As a torpedo hurtles hissing along barely below the surface of the water, so hurtled the head--the head with its wicked eyes on knobs; the head with its vast, scaly, long snout, its raised nostrils at the tip, its shuddering array of jagged teeth, its awful, armed, diabolical aspect of conscious power--straight at the king's son. Without warning had it come, and with still less had it attacked.

Swim, oh, swim, little king's son, for your very life! But the king's son did not swim--at least, not in that sense. He turned. Yes, that is right--turned; and the monstrosity of the armed snout, that same being a crocodile, of course, was upon him even as he did so. There would have been no time to turn after--no life! Still, the king's son may not have known that. Maybe he turned, as a man attacked by a dog does, because he felt, in a cold, nervy sort of spasm all up his spine, the terrible defenselessness of his hind-limbs. And as he turned, he struck--bat-bat!--struck with all his talons unsheathed; struck with every ounce and grain of power, and force of brain to back that power, in his system; struck as only a cornered cat can strike; struck like a--lion.

The result was astounding.