Meanwhile the sighing changed into a long-drawn-out thundering roar, enough to terrify any human being, for even creatures who know no fear tremble from head to foot, shaking like panes of glass at the report of far-off cannon.
Stasch threw a hurried glance at Nell, and seeing her quivering mouth and moist eyes, he said:
“Don’t be frightened. Don’t cry.”
She answered under a great strain:
“I don’t want to cry, but my eyes perspire so—oh!”
The last scream escaped from her lips because at that moment a second roar, far more powerful and much nearer than the first, rang out from the forest. The horses began to push themselves still nearer the hedge, and if the long, steel-like prickles of the acacia branches had not hindered them they would have broken through. Saba growled and trembled like an ivy leaf, and Kali began to repeat in a broken voice:
“A second roar, far more powerful and much nearer than the first, rang out from the forest. The echoes filled the jungle, saturating the darkness with thunder and fear.”
“Sir! Two! Two! Two!”
As the lions were now responding to each other, they continued to roar, and this awful concert kept up for some time in the darkness, for as soon as one of the animals ceased the other began. Stasch was unable to distinguish from what direction their voices came, for the echoes repeated them over and over in the gorge and reverberated from cliff to cliff, sounded above and beneath, filled the forest and the jungle, saturating the darkness with thunder and with fear.