“Jump up there and shoot him, Archie,” cried Fred. “You are the nearest to him, and we don’t want that yelping in our ears much longer.”
“No, sir!” exclaimed Archie, drawing himself close into his own corner. “I wouldn’t go up there for—for—No, sir! Who knows but that he has called up a lion already?”
“I declare he has,” said Eugene, in a thrilling whisper. “I can see him. I see two—three. There is a troop of them!”
This startling announcement would have tested the nerves of older and more experienced hunters than Archie and Fred were; and if what they heard was enough to set their hearts to beating rapidly, what they saw a moment later was sufficient to take all the courage out of them. A single glance showed them that Eugene’s eyes had not deceived him. There they were in plain sight—a number of tawny animals moving swiftly about on the opposite bank of the fountain, passing and repassing one another in their rapid evolutions, crouching close to the ground, and gradually drawing nearer to the top of the bank where the jackal had disappeared, probably with the object of getting the “wind” of the boys. Archie tried to count them; but when he fixed his gaze upon one, two or three more would pass before it, these would quickly give place to as many more, and finally Archie became so bewildered and excited that he was ready to declare that troops of lions were springing up out of the ground before his very eyes. He thought they showed rather plainly in the dark for lions, but still there could be no doubt that they were lions. Their color and their stealthy, crouching movements were enough to settle that point.
“If they get in here among us, there’ll not be a mouthful apiece for them, will there?” said Fred.
“They’ll not all get in here,” replied Archie.
“Now that we are cornered, it is a good time to show what we are made of. I am going to begin shooting.”
Before the words had fairly left his lips Archie’s double-barrel spoke, and one of the lions sprang into the air, and fell at full length on the ground. A second received the contents of the other barrel without falling, and even succeeded in getting away out of sight, although Archie was certain that the ball from his Maynard, which he caught up as soon as his double-barrel was empty, must have found a lodgment in his body somewhere.
While Archie was thus engaged, his two companions were not idle. They promptly opened on the lions with their own weapons, and without waiting to see the effect of the bullets from their double-barrels, caught up their sixteen-shooters, and pumped the shots right and left. The magazines were emptied in a trice, and then the three hunters hastily ducked their heads and crouched close behind the walls of their hiding-place, holding their breath in dread suspense, and waiting for some of the wounded members of the troop to precipitate themselves into the shooting-hole. But nothing of the kind happened. All was still outside. They heard only the beating of their own hearts.
“We must have hit those we killed,” Fred ventured to whisper at last.