CHAPTER XXV
THE THIRTEEN ROCKS
“He’s coming this way! Use your pistol, quick!”
Crack! Crack! Both of the pistols spoke up, and the lion was hit in the head and in the left foreleg. Then the two Rover boys fired again, this time at even closer range, one bullet piercing the beast’s ear and the other plowing through the skin of his back.
But nothing stopped the rush of the ferocious lion, and it was only by leaping to the rear of the nearest rock that Jack and Randy escaped the onslaught.
In the next few minutes so many things happened that it is almost impossible to describe them. The lion, with another roar and snarling from pain, came around the rocks just as the boys leaped up. Then, standing several feet above the beast, they fired once more. The lion retreated, got wedged in between a tree and a rock, and turned savagely, probably thinking in his excitement that he had in some way been attacked from the rear.
“There’s a shelf just above us!” exclaimed Jack, glancing around for some means of escape. “Let’s get up there!”
Roar after roar came from the lion, the sound so terrifying it was enough to make anybody tremble. The goat was leaping from rock to rock, and now disappeared from sight. The shelf the young major mentioned was a rocky one about three feet above their heads. Over it grew a few vines, and Randy clutched these only to have them come away in his hands.
“Here, let me boost you up, Randy!” exclaimed Jack. “Quick! That lion may take it into his head to leap at us!”
“But what of you?”
“I’ll get up somehow! Hurry! We have no time to waste!”