The Night of Temptation

by Victoria Cross

For a second, Regina stood motionless. The blinding realisation came upon her that she stood alone in the tent and that her rival was gone from her to a certain death. Her invocation had been heard.

In that moment a view of her future came to her. She would be his, alone with him again, safe, secure, protected, loved, herself and her child. And all that was required of her was to do nothing. No one could blame her. Fate had come to her aid. Why should she not receive back her life and happiness at its hands?

The temptation came upon her and gripped her for a moment so that she could not move.

Then she picked up her rifle, jammed her pistol more firmly in her belt and went to the flap of the tent door and pushed it aside.

In the bright African moonlight she saw the form of the great yellow cat, trotting leisurely across the sand in the direction of a low ridge of sandhill, scrub and rock that lay towards the east, obliquely opposite to the direction in which the men had gone. The moonlight showed her clearly its victim flung over its shoulder for its convenience in long travel. She could see, too, it was a lioness, and these two facts made her think that the girl was probably uninjured. The lioness was out hunting, not for herself but for food for her cubs, and the prey was being carefully carried back to them. She could see there was no struggle. No screams broke the stillness. In helpless unconsciousness the girl was being borne away to a swift, inexorable death. And to the watcher at the tent door came again the great voice of Self and all the cries of the Flesh saying: "Let her go! It is not your part to save her."

She did not know how many servants had gone with the men; doubtless they had left some, but those probably not the most active nor the best shots. If she took the time to go to the back of the camp and find and rouse them, before anything could really be done in rescue the lioness would have disappeared. The natives would talk and gesticulate, weapons would probably not be ready, the time in which rescue could be effected would be lost. Yet Regina would appear to have done all she could, she would have roused the camp, she would have tried to get assistance; no one could expect a woman to go out on foot alone to face lions in the night, nor reproach her if she did not.

Regina would be guiltless and Sybil for ever unable to mar her life again.

But as there is a magnetic pole which draws all magnets to itself, so in this world there is that great indefinable Force of the Right which draws all noble natures always to itself. Where they see the Good and the Right gleaming ahead of them, there they must follow, though stones cut their feet and thorns tear their flesh. The Right, through everything, pulls them to itself. And it drew Regina's feet swiftly over the threshold of the tent now. Silently, quickly, gripping her rifle, she followed in the wake of the lioness. And Temptation walked beside her, trying vainly to suffocate her soul with its dark wings. She knew that in the effort before her she must probably surrender her own life, and the greatness of the sacrifice, the immensity of the demand made upon her appealed to her, called upon the heroism within her.

For some miles the lioness went on at the same easy trot, and Regina followed swiftly, but unable to shorten the distance between them. Then the yellow form began to spring and bound, and for a second now and then was lost to view, and her pursuer knew that she had reached the scrub by the rocks. Then the tawny form disappeared altogether and only the human figure remained, hurrying over the sand in the moonlight.

At last she reached the scrub amongst the rising sandhills and here she went very cautiously, searching for the mouth of the lair she guessed was hidden there. She stood still for a moment, listening for a sound to guide her. A faint scuffling noise came from a gully beside her, deep down between two black faces of rock and overgrown with stunted thorn and the disk-leaved cactus. Down, down through these, one step at a time, silently, holding her heavy rifle above her head to avoid the catching thorn, she descended. The moon, that had been obscured by a tiny cloud, broke suddenly again into full brilliance and she saw she was at the mouth of the cave.