Dylara, only a few yards from the trail's mouth, came to a sudden halt. Years of elbow rubbing with the jungle and its inhabitants reminded her that trail mouths a short distance from water were where Sadu and Tarlok were most likely to be lying in wait for game. And this was the time of day the meat-eaters began their search for food.
Standing there near the clearing's edge, she peered intently at the waist-high grasses shrouding the boles of trees on both sides of the trail. A light breeze stirred them softly, and at one spot directly beneath a jungle patriarch's broad boughs, a trailing vine swayed in unison with the wind.
But wait! That vine was quivering unsteadily, then moving against the breeze! Instantly Dylara's eyes were fixed on that spot. Little by little her searching gaze made out the outlines of some amorphous shape crouching motionless behind a curtain of grasses.
Imagination? Perhaps, she told herself. But the jungle dweller without it soon left his bones to bleach along the trails. Cautiously she took a backward step ... another, and yet a third.
The long grasses at that point were very still now as the breeze died. Was she being overly careful—running from shadows? A tree stump, a fallen log—any of several explanations would cover that motionless bulk lying there.
Suddenly the brooding silence was torn apart by a thunderous roar and Sadu, the lion, aware that his prey was on the point of escape, sprang from the depths of foliage and bore down upon her with express-train speed, snarling and growling as he came.
Even as Dylara turned to flee, she knew her life was finished, that nothing could save her now. Any hope that she would reach safety among the trees was futile; the nearest was long yards away and Sadu would have buried his talons and fangs in her defenseless flesh while she was still far short of escape.
Yet so strong was the urge of self-preservation that she was racing like the wind for sanctuary despite the uselessness of flight; while behind her Sadu was cutting down the gap between them as though the Cro-Magnard princess were standing still.
The knowledge that his prey was inescapably doomed did not cause Sadu to loiter along the way or grow over-confident. He judged the intervening space with a practiced eye; and, at precisely the right moment, he launched his great, heavy-maned body in the final Gargantuan leap that would end full in the center of that smoothly tanned back.