head and gazing upwards, began to listen.
"What is it?" Stas asked.
"Rain," replied the negro.
Stas in turn listened. The branches of the tree mantled the tent andthe whole zareba so that not a drop of rain fell upon the ground, butabove could be heard the rustle of leaves. As the sultry air was notstirred by the slightest breeze, it was easy to surmise that it was therain which began to murmur in the jungle.
The rustle increased with each moment and after a time the children sawdrops flowing from the leaves, similar in the luster of the fire toruddy pearls. As Kali had forecast, a downpour began. The rustlechanged into a roar. Ever-increasing drops fell, and finally throughthe dense foliage whole streams of water began to penetrate.
The camp-fire darkened. In vain Kali threw whole armfuls into it. Onthe surface the wet boughs smoked only, and below, the burning woodbegan to hiss and the flame, however much it was replenished, began tobe extinguished.
"When the downpour quenches the fire, the zareba will defend us," Stassaid to pacify Nell.
After which he conducted the little girl into the tent and wrapped herin plaids, but he himself went out as quickly as possible as thebriefly interrupted roars had broken out again. This time they soundedconsiderably nearer and as if they were gleeful.
The downpour intensified with each moment. The rain pattered on thehard leaves and splashed. If the camp-fire had not been under theshelter of the boughs, it would have been quenched at once, but as itwas there hovered over it mainly smoke, amid which narrow, blue littleflames glittered. Kali gave up the task and did not add any moredeadwood. Instead he flung a rope around the tree and with its aidclimbed higher and higher on the trunk.
"What are you doing?" Stas asked.
"Kali climbs the tree."
"What for?" shouted the boy, indignant at the negro's selfishness.
Bright, dreadful flashes of lightning rent the darkness and Kali'sreply was drowned by a peal of thunder which shook heaven and thewilderness. Simultaneously a whirlwind broke out, tugged the boughs ofthe tree, swept away in the twinkling of an eye the camp-fire, seizedthe embers, still burning under the ashes, and carried them withsheaves of sparks into the jungle.
Impenetrable darkness temporarily encompassed the camp. A terribletropical storm raged on earth and in the sky. Thunder followed thunder,lightning, lightning. The gory zigzags of thunderbolts rent the sky,black as a pall. On the neighboring rocks appeared strange blue balls,which sometimes rolled along the ravine and then burst with a blindinglight and broke out with a peal so terrible that it seemed as if therocks would be reduced to powder from the shock.
Afterwards darkness again followed.
Stas became alarmed about Nell and went groping in the darkness to thetent. The tent, protected by the white-ant hillock and the gianttree-trunk, stood yet, but the first strong buffet of the whirlwindmight pull out the ropes and carry it the Lord knows where. And thewhirlwind subsided, then broke out again with a fury, carrying waves ofrain, and clouds of leaves, and branches broken off in the adjacentforest. Stas was beset with despair. He did not know whether to leaveNell in the tent or lead her out of it. In the first case she might getentangled in the ropes and be seized with the linen folds, and in theother she would get a thorough drenching and also would be carriedaway, as Stas, though beyond comparison stronger, with the greatestdifficulty could keep on his feet.
The problem was solved by the whirlwind which a moment later carriedaway the top of the tent. The linen walls now did not afford anyshelter. Nothing else remained to do but to wait in the darkness inwhich the lions lurked, until the storm passed away.
Stas conjectured that probably the lions had sought shelter from thetempest in the neighboring forest, but he was certain that after thestorm they would return. The danger of the situation increased becausethe wind had totally swept away the zareba.
Everything was threatened with destruction. The rifle could not availfor anything, nor could his energy. In the presence of the storm,thunderbolts, hurricane, rain, darkness, and the lions, which might beconcealed but a few paces away, he felt disarmed and helpless. Thelinen walls tugged by the wind splashed them with water from all sides,so, enclosing Nell in his arms, he led her from the tent; after whichboth nestled close to the trunk of the tree, awaiting death or divinemercy.
At this moment, between one blow of the wind and another, Kali's voicereached them, barely audible amidst the splashing of the rain.
"Great master! Up the tree! up the tree!"
And simultaneously the end of a wet rope, lowered from above, touchedthe boy's shoulder.
"Tie the 'bibi,' and Kali will pull her up!" the negro continued toshout.
Stas did not hesitate a moment. Wrapping Nell in a saddle-cloth inorder that the rope should not cut her body, he tied a girdle aroundher; after which he lifted her and shouted:
"Pull!"
The first boughs of the tree were quite low so Nell's aerial journeywas brief. Kali soon seized her with his powerful arms and placed herbetween the trunk and a giant bough, where there was sufficient roomfor half a dozen of such diminutive beings. No wind could blow her awayfrom there and in addition, even although water flowed all over thetree, the trunk, about fifteen feet thick, shielded her at least fromnew waves of rain borne obliquely by the wind.
Having attended to the safety of the little "bibi," the negro againlowered the rope for Stas, but he, like a captain who is the last toleave a sinking ship, ordered Mea to go ahead of him.
Kali did not at all need to pull her as in a moment she climbed therope with skill and agility as if she were the full sister of achimpanzee. For Stas it was considerably more difficult, but he was toowell-trained an athlete not to overcome the weight of his own bodytogether with the rifle and a score of cartridges with which he filledhis pockets.
In this manner all four found themselves in the tree. Stas was soaccustomed to think of Nell in every situation that now he wasoccupied, above all, in ascertaining whether she was not in danger offalling, whether she had sufficient room and whether she could lie downcomfortably. Satisfied in this respect, he began to wrack his brains asto how to protect her from the rain. But for this there was no help. Itwould have been easy to construct during the daytime some kind of roofover her head, but now they were enveloped in such darkness that theycould not see each other at all. If the storm at last passed away andif they succeeded in starting the fire again, they might dry Nell'sdress! Stas, with despair, thought that the little girl, soaked to theskin, would undoubtedly on the following day suffer from the firstattack of fever.
He feared that towards the morning, after the storm, it would be ascool as it was on the previous night. Thus far the wind was rather warmand the rain as though heated. Stas was surprised at its persistence ashe knew that the more strongly a storm raged the shorter was itsduration.
After a long time the thunder abated and the buffets of the windweakened, but the rain continued to fall, less copious, indeed, thanbefore, but so heavy and thick that the leaves did not afford anyprotection against it. From below came the murmur of water as if thewhole jungle were transformed into a lake. Stas thought that in theravine certain death would have awaited them. Immense sorrow possessedhim at the thought of what might have become of Saba, and he did notdare to speak of him to Nell. He, nevertheless, had a slight hope thatthe intelligent dog would find a safe haven among the rocks projectingabove the ravine. There was not, however, a possibility of going to himwith any aid.
They sat, therefore, one beside the other amid the expanding boughs,drenched and waiting for the day. After the lapse of a few more hoursthe air began to cool and the rain finally ceased. The water too floweddown the slope to a lower place as they could not hear a splash or amurmur. Stas had observed on the previous days that Kali understood howto stir up a fire with wet twigs, so it occurred to him to order thenegro to descend and try whether he would not succeed this time. But atthe moment in which he turned to him something happened which froze theblo
od in the veins of all four.
The deep silence of the night was rent suddenly by the squeaking ofhorses, horrible, shrill, full of pain, fears, and mortal dismay. Somemischief was afoot in the darkness; there resounded short rattlings inthe throat, afterwards hollow groans, a snorting, a second squeak yetmore penetrating, after which all was quiet.
"Lions, great Master! Lions killing horses!" whispered Kali.
There was something so horrible in this night attack, in the superiorforce of the monsters, and in the sudden slaughter of the defenselessanimals that Stas for a time was struck with consternation, and forgotabout the rifle. What, after all, would it have availed him to shoot insuch darkness? Unless for this, that those midnight assassins, if theflash and report should frighten them, would abandon the horses alreadykilled, and start after those which were scared away and had run fromthe camp as far as their fettered legs would permit them.
Stas' flesh began to