86 BEYOND ALL SUCCOUR. 
giraffe, elephant, rhinoceros—and_ the lion, 
with his burning eyes, watched them. 
Sometimes the nervous ones—the zebra, 
the antelope, the gazelle, and the giraffe— 
‘winded’ him, and fled, stampeding in a con- 
fused thunder of hoofs and clouds of dust; 
but the king of beasts never moved. 
His wound was stiffening. A great pool of 
blood marked where he lay. His coat was 
sopping. 
Just before dawn he went down to drink 
again. He was very thirsty, even for a lion. 
A single hyena was at the edge when he 
appeared, and, though well out of reach, it 
bolted, as the hyena always does, at nothing. 
But it came back; it hung round; it sniffed ; 
and the lion saw it, and knew. 
The long, stifling day, with its maddening, 
black swarm of flies around the wounded 
beast, dragged brazenly on, and, except for 
his snaps at the tormenting winged fiends, 
one might have thought the lion was dead 
there in his bush. 
Then a tiny, graceful gazelle came by, and 
the lion sprang out; but he fell short, and 
nearly pitched over on to his nose. Things 
had got so bad as that. 
Night again came striding westward over 
the trees, and the vultures that sat on them 
