immediate and perhaps fatal attention, Jane Clayton resolved to
risk all in one last attempt to reach the tree and clamber to the
lower branches.

Gathering herself stealthily for the effort, she leaped suddenly
to her feet, but almost simultaneously the lion sprang up, wheeled
and with wide-distended jaws and terrific roars, charged swiftly
down upon her.

Those who have spent lifetimes hunting the big game of Africa will
tell you that scarcely any other creature in the world attains the
speed of a charging lion. For the short distance that the great
cat can maintain it, it resembles nothing more closely than the
onrushing of a giant locomotive under full speed, and so, though
the distance that Jane Clayton must cover was relatively small,
the terrific speed of the lion rendered her hopes of escape almost
negligible.

Yet fear can work wonders, and though the upward spring of the
lion as he neared the tree into which she was scrambling brought
his talons in contact with her boots she eluded his raking grasp,
and as he hurtled against the bole of her sanctuary, the girl drew
herself into the safety of the branches above his reach.

For some time the lion paced, growling and moaning, beneath the
tree in which Jane Clayton crouched, panting and trembling. The
girl was a prey to the nervous reaction from the frightful ordeal
through which she had so recently passed, and in her overwrought
state it seemed that never again should she dare descend to the
ground among the fearsome dangers which infested the broad stretch