"Very well," he said, "go alone, but go directly, and do not tarry on the way."
"And may I pluck just those flowers?" she asked, pointing at a cusso bush, covered with an immense number of rosy flowers.
"You may."
Saying this, he turned her about, pointed out to her once more for greater certainty the clump of trees from which the smoke of the camp issued and from which resounded the King's trumpeting, after which he plunged into the high jungle growing on the brink of the ravine.
But he had not gone a hundred paces when he was seized by uneasiness. "Why, it was stupid on my part," he thought, "to permit Nell to walk alone in Africa. Stupid, stupid. She is such a child! I ought not to leave her for a step unless the King is with her. Who knows what may happen! Who knows whether under that rosy bush some kind of snake is not lying! Big apes can leap out of the ravine and carry her away from me or bite her. God forbid! I committed a terrible folly."
And his uneasiness changed into anger at himself, and at the same time into a terrible fear. Not reflecting any longer, he turned around as if stung by a sudden evil presentiment. Walking hurriedly, he held the rifle ready to fire, with that great dexterity which he had acquired through daily hunting, and advanced amid the thorny mimosas without any rustle, exactly like a panther when stealing to a herd of antelopes at night. After a while he shoved his head out of the high underwood, glanced about and was stupefied.
Nell stood under a cusso bush with her little hand outstretched; the rosy flowers, which she had dropped in terror, lay at her feet, and from the distance of about twenty paces a big tawny-gray beast was creeping towards her amid the low grass.
Stas distinctly saw his green eyes fastened upon the little maid's face, which was as white as chalk, his narrow head with flattened ears, his shoulder-blades raised upward on account of his lurking and creeping posture, his long body and yet longer tail, the end of which he moved with a light, cat-like motion. One moment more one spring and it would be all over with Nell.
At this sight the boy, hardened and inured to danger, in the twinkling of an eye understood that if he did not regain self-command, if he did not muster courage, if he shot badly and only wounded the assailant, even though heavily, the little maid must perish. But he could master himself to that degree that under the influence of these thoughts his hands and limbs suddenly became calm like steel springs. With one glance of the eye he detected a dark spot in the neighborhood of the beast's ear,—with one light motion he directed the barrel of the rifle at it and fired.
The report of the shot, Nell's scream, and a short, shrill bleat resounded at the same moment. Stas jumped towards Nell, and covering her with his own body, he aimed again at the assailant.