distinguished a long, dark body emerging from the reeds and circling
curiously and cautiously around the pitfall; nearer and nearer it
approached the helpless prisoner until perhaps twenty feet distant from
it. Here the thing seemed to crouch and remain quiescent, but only for a
little time. Then resounded across the valley a screaming roar, so fierce
and raucous and death-telling and terrifying that even the hardened
hunters leaped with affright. At the same moment a dark object shot
through the air and landed on the back of the creature in the shallow
pit. The tiger was abroad! There was a wild bleat of terror and agony, a
growl fiercer and shorter than the first hoarse cry of the tiger, and,
then, for a moment silence, but only for a moment. Snorts, almost as
terrible in their significance as the tiger's roar, came from the
marsh's edge. A vast form loomed above the slight embankment and there
came the thunder of ponderous feet. The rhinoceros mother was charging
the great tiger!

There was a repetition of the fierce snorts, with the wild rush of the
rhinoceros, another roar, the sound of which reechoed through the valley,
and then could be dimly seen a black something flying through the air and
alighting, apparently, upon the back of the charging monster. There was a
confusion of forms and a confusion of terrifying sounds, the snarling
roar of the great tiger and half whistling bellow of the great pachyderm,
but nothing could be seen distinctly. That a gigantic duel was in
progress the cave men knew, and knew, as well, that its scene was one
upon which they could not venture. The clamor had not ended when the
darkness became complete and then each father, with his son, fled swiftly
homeward.

Early the next morning, the four were together again at the same point of
safety and advantage, and again the frost-covered valley was a sea of