Instead of being only uneasy, he now became angry with himself and terribly frightened. Without reasoning further, he turned back, as though with a foreboding of evil. He stepped quickly to one side, and, as a matter of habit, formed in his daily hunting expeditions, he held his gun ready to shoot and glided through the prickly mimosas as silently as a panther creeping upon an antelope herd at night. Then he thrust his head above the tall shrubbery—and stood there as if petrified.
Nell was standing under the kousso bush with hands extended; the pinkish flowers, which she had dropped in her dismay, lay at her feet, and about twenty feet away a large golden-yellow animal was creeping toward her through the low grass.
Stasch distinctly saw its green eyes fixed on the chalk-white face of the girl, he saw its bowed head and flattened ears, its upraised paw stretched forward, expressing its waiting and stealthy attitude, its long body and even longer tail, the end of which was moving with an almost imperceptible cat-like movement. Another moment—a spring—and it would have been the last of Nell!
At this sight the boy, accustomed as he was to danger, at once realized that if he did not immediately regain his composure and presence of mind, if he were to shoot and merely wound the animal, no matter how badly, the girl would be doomed. Controlling himself, and stimulated by these thoughts, his arms and legs suddenly became as rigid as steel. Thanks to his habit of observation, he noticed a dark spot near the animal’s ear, took aim, and pulled the trigger.
At the same instant came the report of the shot, a scream from Nell, and a dreadful growl. Stasch sprang in front of Nell, and while protecting her with his own body took aim again.
The second shot was quite unnecessary. The terrible cat lay stretched out like a rag, its nose on the ground, its paws in the grass, and it never even twitched. The bullet, an explosive one, had torn away the entire back of the head and neck, above which the eyes glared and the bloody, torn ganglia of the brain could be seen.
The little huntsman and Nell stood for a moment side by side, looking first at the slain beast, then at each other—speechless. Then a strange thing happened. Stasch, whose self-possession and calmness would have astonished the most experienced marksman, suddenly turned pale, his legs began to tremble, tears started from his eyes, he put his hands to his head and repeated over and over again:
“Oh, Nell, Nell, if I had not turned back!”
Here he was seized with terror, a terror bordering on despair, and every nerve in his body twitched and trembled as if he had an attack of ague. After his tremendous mental and bodily tension there came a moment of weakness and lassitude. He imagined he saw the terrible beast lying in a dark cave tearing Nell’s body to pieces with its bloody mouth. And indeed this might really have happened—it would have happened had he not turned back. A moment, a second more, and it would have been too late. These thoughts were too much for him to bear.
The result was that Nell, who was the first to recover from the fright, was obliged to comfort him. The dear little child threw both her small arms around his neck and wept, crying out as loudly as though trying to awaken him out of a sound sleep.