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"Well," said the Major, "bring us our guns, Bremen. I am willing to accept the armed neutrality, if they will consent to it." The caravan passed on; the lions remaining crouched where they were, eying them, it is true, but not rising from their beds.
Long days and nights they sailed, sometimes running in close to the land, but they were afraid to go ashore very often, because of the wild beasts and the natives. Many times they saw great lions come roaring down on to the beach, and once Robinson shot one that he saw lying asleep, and took its skin to make a bed for himself on the boat.
For the day or two that they held together they were safe, but when they spread out and spread they must, to reach the western pass then the cowmen could rush them at night like lions that raid a corral, scattering one band after the other, and the coyotes would do the rest! That was the joint in the armor of the sheepmen, and it robbed them of their sleep.
Superstition had set its mark on him on Claridge Pasha's safety depended his own, that was his belief; and the look of this thin, bronzed face, with its living fire, gave him vital assurance of length of days. And David answered: "May thy life be the nursling of Time, Effendina. I bring the tribute of the rebel lions once more to thy hand. What was thine, and was lost, is thine once more.
And all these centuries it has been lying here in the sun, asleep, forgotten, deserted, lost, given over to nomads and to lions until I came. I am the first European since Alexander the Great who has seen what it might be. It is not so impossible that I might open again those choked-up canals which once made these burnt plains a paradise. In those mountains I have found what I have found.
On the first night the old male lion "breasted" the fatal string and bit the dust. Next night the lioness was destroyed in a similar way: and shortly after a full-grown young male. The trap then lay idle for a while; but about a week after a half-grown "cub" was shot near the camp by Hendrik, no doubt the last of that family, as no lions were seen for a long time after.
"Mr Grosvenor and I are going to have a try for those lions, Jantje, if they are still lurking in the neighbourhood," observed Dick. "I believe you said that these people report the beasts to be somewhere in yonder clump of bush? Very well. Now, I want a party to enter the bush on the windward side and carefully beat down-wind in order to drive the brutes into the open.
There I planned to build a house, in some bright future day, that should be in effective keeping with the natural grandeur of the place, quaint, lordly, substantial, with the appearance of having fallen somewhat into disuse, ivy growing over the dark stone walls, and moss in the winding drives, and carved lions at the gate.
The seats and couches were of gold covered with lions' skins, and a table of silver stood by the side of the blind queen. Kassandane was seated in a costly arm-chair. She wore a robe of violet-blue, embroidered with silver, and over her snow-white hair lay a long veil of delicate lace, woven in Egypt, the ends of which were wound round her neck and tied in a large bow beneath her chin.
There are five other doors to the temple, of which the door of the Lions is the finest, and just beside it a heavy Ionic portico in the most detestable taste indicates the feeling and culture that survived in the reign of Charles IV. To the north of the west facade rises the massive tower.
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