“Here! Keep back! What are you going to do?” exclaimed Jerry, seizing the little scientist by the arm as he was about to step forward and nearer to the two lions. “You can’t scare them by letting them sniff ammonia, as you once did the bull.”
“I’m not going to try ammonia on them,” stated the professor. “I only wish I had some, and then I could save my vespa maculata! I may never capture any more.”
“What’s that?” cried Jerry. “What have you in that box?” For the professor had raised a small box as though to hurl it at the mountain lions, an action at which they growled the more menacingly.
“I have some vespa maculata in here,” the professor replied.
“Is that stronger than ammonia?” asked Bob, while the lions drew nearer.
“It’s hornets—about two hundred of them,” cried the professor. “Get ready now, boys, duck into the bushes when I hurl this!”
He threw the box. It struck the ground directly in front of the mountain lions and burst open. The lions growled, sprang a little to one side in alarm, and then, as the boys in obedience to the advice of the scientist ducked into roadside bushes, they beheld a curious sight.
The hornets which the professor had caught and imprisoned that afternoon, being suddenly let loose, attacked with all their pent up anger the mountain lions on their most vulnerable spots, namely, their noses. In an instant [each of the tawny beasts was stung by a score or more of the fiercest insects] of their kind known to science. There is nothing more sudden in its action nor more painful than the sting of a hornet, and the mountain lions had more than their share.
