“A ball between the eyes, or I am lost!” thought he. “In the name of the Father and of the Son——”
The lion got up, stretched himself, and lowered his head. His mouth began to open and his eyes to narrow. Who was this tiny being that dared come so near? Ready to spring, he crouched on his hind legs, his paws slightly twitching——
At this instant Stasch sighted the gun straight at the middle of the animal’s forehead—and pulled the trigger. The shot resounded. The lion reared—rose to his full height—fell over on his back with his four paws in the air, and in his death agony rolled off the rock, plunging down to the bottom of the ravine.
For a few minutes Stasch still kept him within range of the gun, but when he saw that the twitching had ceased, and that the yellow body lay there motionless and stiff, he opened the gun and put in another cartridge.
The walls of the cliffs still rang out with loud echoes. Gebhr, Chamis, and the Bedouins could not at first realize what had happened, for it had rained during the previous night, and on account of the humidity in the air the smoke hid everything in the narrow ravine. But when it disappeared they shouted for joy and tried to rush up to the boy, but their efforts were in vain, for no power on earth could force the horses to take even one step forward.
Stasch turned, took in the four Arabs at a glance, and fixed his eyes on Gebhr.
“Enough!” he said, clenching his teeth together. “The measure is more than full. You shall murder neither Nell nor any one else.”
And suddenly he felt his cheeks and nose again grow cold, but this was a different kind of cold—not caused by fright, but by a terrible, fixed resolve, that suddenly hardened his heart like steel.
“Yes, it must be!” he said to himself. “They are all villains, hangmen, murderers—and Nell is in their hands!”
“You shall not kill her!” he repeated.