The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1894-10-03

over with, 50 only those screams might
be stopped.
1t seemed as though il had gone on
for hours, when some men rushed in
with lantern and long, sharp irons.
A hundred voices cried; "Here he Il,
over herer and they ran around out
side the cage and threw the light of
the lantern ON place where heap of
gray, goldlaced clothes writhed and
twisted beneath three great bulks of
fulvous hide and bristling black
name.
The irons were useless. The three
furies dragged their prey out Of their
reach ard crouched over it again and
recommended. No one dared go into
the cage, and still the man lived and
struggled and screamed
L saw Tcppsn's finger go TO his
mouth. and through that medley of
dreadful noises there issued a sound
that, sick as I was, made me shrink
anew and close my eyes and teeth and
shudder as though some cold slime had
been poured through the hollow of my
bones where the marrow should be. IL
was rs the noise of a fine whiplash,
mingled whirr of locust magnified
a hundred times, and ended in an alb
rupt clacking noise thrice repeated.
AT once | remembered where | had
heard it before, because, having once
heard the hiss of an aroused and angry
serpent, no child of Eve can ever for
get it.
The sound that now came from be-
tween Toppan's teeth and that filled
the arena from wall TO wall was the
sound that ! had heard once before in
the Paris Jardin des Plantes, at feed
ing time-the sound made by the great
constructors when their huge bodies are
looped and coiled like reata for the
throw that never misses, that never re
lakes, and that no beast of the field is
strong enough to withstand. All the
filthy wickedness and abominable
malace of the centuries since the Enc
nv first ePtered into that shape that
crawls was concentrated in that hoarse,
whistling hiss-a hiss that was cold
and piercing like an icicle-made sound.
Ii was not loud, but had in it some
sort of penetrating quality that cut
through the waves of horrid sounds
above us, a the snake-carved PROV of
"a Viking galley might cut its way
through the tumbling eddies of a
tide.
At the second repetition the lions
paused. None better than they knew
what was the meaning of that hiss.
They had heard il before in their ma
tive hunting grounds in the earlier
days of summer, when the first heat
lay close over the jungle, like the hol-
low of the palm of an angry god. Or,
if they themselves had not heard it,
their sires before them had, and the
fear of the thing bred in their bones
suddenly leaped TO life at the sound,
and griped them and held them close.
When for a third time the sound
sung and shrilled in their ears, theiT
heads drew between their shoulders,
their great eyes grew small and gilt
tering, the hackles rose and stiffened
on their backs, their tails dropped, and
they backed slowly to the further side
of The cage and cowed there, whining
and beaten.
Toppan wiped the sweat from the in
side of his hands and went into the
cage with the keepers and gathered up
the painting, broken body, with its
twitching fingers and white face, and
carried il out As they lifted it, the
handful Of pitiful medals dropped from
the SHREDDED, gray coat and ratified
down upon the floor In the silence
that had now succeeded, il was about
the only sound one heard.
As We sat that evening on the porch
of Toppan's house, in fashionable
suburb of the city, he said for the third
time: II had trick from a. Mpongwee
headman," and added: 'It was while
was at Victoria Falls, waiting to cross
the Kalahari desert.
Then he continued, his eyes growing
keener and his manner changing:
'EThere is some interesting work to be
done in that quarter by some one. You
see, the Kalahari runs like this"-he
drew the lines on the ground with his
cane-reoming down i'm something
like this shape from the Orange river
to about the twentieth parallel south.
The aneroid gives its average elevation
about 600 feet. / didn't cross il at the
time, because we had sickness and the
porters cut. But | made a lot of geo.
logical observations, and from these !
have built up theory that the Kala-
hari is no desert at ali, but big, we'll
watered pla'eau, with higher ground
on the east and west.
''The tribes, too, thereabout called
the place Linoka-Noka, and that's the
Bantu for rivers upon rivers. They're
nasty though, these Bantu, and gave
us lot of trouble. They have a way
of splitting little poisoned thOrns into
YOU unawaFes, and your tongue turns
blue and swells up and your teeth fall
out and"-
His wife Victoria came out on the
porch in evening dress.
"Ah, Gle" said Toppan, jumping up
with very sweet smile, "we were just
talking about your paper-german next
Tuesday, and think we might have
some very pretty favors made out of
white tissue paper-roses and butteries,
you know. San Francisco ArgOnduf.
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