CHAPTER IV
NERO IN A CAVE
Now while the hunter, hidden on a platform in a tree in the jungle, was shouting about having shot a lion, Nero was doing some shouting of another sort. To tell the truth, he was howling and roaring, just as, sometimes, when you step on the puppy's tail, by mistake, of course, the puppy howls. Nero was howling and roaring with pain.
"Oh, what has happened? What is the matter?" cried Nero, in lion talk, of course, as he rolled over and over on the dried leaves of the jungle. "What a terrible pain in my paw! Oh, I wonder if the goat did this! If he did—"
Nero stopped his howling long enough to try to stand up and look through the jungle trees to where he had first seen the goat.
There the bleating animal was. It had not moved.
"Surely that goat couldn't have given me the pain in my paw," said Nero, between his howls. "I wonder what the goat means by staying in one place so long, especially when it must know we lions are out on a night-hunt. And what gave me the pain in my foot, and what made the loud noise?"
As Nero roared, so the other hunting lions roared. Switchie and the smaller lions, like Nero, could not roar very loudly, but Nero's father, and the other full-grown beasts made the very ground tremble with their rumblings.
At the same time there were other jungle cries from other animals. The monkeys, who had been sleeping in the tree-tops, began to chatter and scold, as they swung to and fro.