"I could feel the cold sweat break out upon me. I could almost sense the last struggle when she should have sprung upon me in the bunk. But at that instant the cubs beyond the door set up their cries anew. That saved me for the time being. With a mighty bound the puma flung herself against the door. Again and again she flung herself at it like a battering ram.
"But it was a stout door and it resisted all her attacks till at last, panting and breathless, she lay down on the floor of the hut to rest. I dared not move for fear of attracting her attention. I was in a horrible trap. Noon came and passed and still she lay there. I was almost mad with thirst, but stronger than my thirst was my fear of that great cat crouching there with her eyes fixed on the door beyond which lay her cubs.
"The door fastened with a steel catch. If only I could reach that catch, release it and open the door there was a possibility that my ordeal would be at an end. Having regained her cubs, there was a chance, a mighty slim one, but still a chance, that the lioness would take them and go.
"The time dragged along on leaden feet. The sun grew lower. A ray of the declining day struck in through the one window the hut boasted and struck the steel catch that confined the cubs.
"How long it was after this that my nerve went all to bits, I don't know. But go it did. I gave a loud yell and then, careless of what might happen, but determined to end the tension at all hazards, I reached out with one foot and kicked up the steel catch.
"I was quick but not quick enough. As the door swung open, the lioness leaped for my leg, but the next instant she saw in the room beyond her two cubs. In her joy at beholding them again everything else was forgotten by her. With her sharp, strong claws she tore the box that confined them to bits, and then, after licking them all over, she picked them up as a cat does her kittens and—strode out of the door.
"I never saw her again; but I shall always remember her by this."
The woodsman drew up one leg of his loose trousers and showed a long, livid scar.
"That bane why I skoll never hear the cry of the puma or a cry that bane lake him without feeling the big fear," he concluded.
Olaf's story had taken some time in its narration, but it had held them spell bound. They all agreed that he had passed through an ordeal well calculated to make him dread the creatures, one of which had held him a prisoner for so many terrible hours.