Part 5 (1/2)

CHAPTER V

NERO IN A TRAP

Tramp, tramp, tramp came the hunters through the jungle, flas.h.i.+ng their lights and looking for the lion which one of them had shot while the hunter was hidden on the platform in a tree. But Nero, cowering away back in the dark cave, kept very still and quiet, and he heard the hunters walk right past his hiding place.

”Good!” thought the boy lion. ”They haven't found me! I'm all right so far; but I wonder how long I will have to stay here, and what the other lions will do.”

Poor Nero felt sick and in pain, and he was lonesome. It's as bad, I think, for a jungle lion to be this way as it would be for your dog. But still Nero did not dare come out of the cave for fear of the hunters.

”I'll just have to stay here,” thought Nero, ”until it's safe to come out. Guess I might as well go to sleep.”

So Nero curled up on the dried gra.s.s in the cave. He knew some other lion once must have used the same cave for a sleeping place, as the gra.s.s bed was made up just as Nero's was in the home cave.

”It's a good thing I found this place,” thought Nero. ”But I wish my father and mother and Chet and Boo were here with me. Yes, and I even wish Switchie were here. I wonder what he is doing!”

And so, wondering, Nero fell asleep in the jungle cave. How long he slept he did not know, for it was as dark as night in the cavern, no matter whether or not the sun shone outside, and Nero was far back from the front door of the cave. When Nero awakened he tried to stand up and walk.

But the moment he put his sore paw down on the stone floor of the cave, he felt such a pain that he let out a howl and then a roar. But as soon as he had done this he knew he had better keep quiet.

”For the hunters may be around the cave yet, outside, and may hear me,”

thought Nero. ”But, oh, how my foot hurts!”

And indeed it did, for it was all swelled up because of the bullet that had gone in from the hunter's gun. Nero could not step on his paw, and he had to limp around on three legs.

”I can't go out of the cave while I'm this way,” he thought. ”I could not run very fast through the jungle, and if the hunters were to see me, lame as I am, they surely would catch me.”

Nero knew something about the hunters in the African jungle, for he had often heard his father and the other lions talk about the men with guns.

Some of the older lions had even been shot at, and one or two of them had scars on them, to show where the bullets had gone in. But the shot places had healed. And among the stories the older lions told when they came to the cave where Nero lived, were tales of lion friends who had gone out on jungle hunts and had never returned.

”What happened to them?” Nero asked one day.

”Oh, I suppose some of them were killed dead by a gun,” said old Bounder, a toothless lion who could chew only soft sc.r.a.ps of meat.

”Others must have been caught in traps and taken away.”

And Nero thought of this talk as he licked his sore paw in the jungle cave. What had happened to him was exactly like what had happened to some of the lions Bounder used to know.

”But I am still here,” thought Nero; ”and when my father or Switchie comes to find me they will know what has happened to me. But I wish they would hurry!”

Nero hopped on three legs about the cave. He was very thirsty, as all animals are after a meal and a sleep, and, besides, he was hot and feverish from his hurt paw. He wanted a drink very much.

Now, when a wild animal wants a drink of water he does not do as you boys and girls can do--go to a faucet or the pump and get a drink. Lions in the jungle can't get water whenever they want it, and the only way they have of telling where some may be--that is unless they live near a spring or a pool--is by smelling.

And so Nero began sniffing to see if he could smell water in the cave, as he knew he dared not go outside. And pretty soon, to his delight, he caught the sweet smell of a spring. He walked in the direction from which the smell came, and soon he heard the trickle of water. And, a little later, he came to a small spring in the far end of the cave.

There was a little pool of water, and Nero took a big drink. Then he let some of the cool water run on his paw, and this made the hurt place feel better.

Nero's foot was so sore that he could not go out of the cave for two days, for it was all he could do to limp around in the cavern and get drinks of water. He dared not go outside. And in these two days he became very hungry, so that at last he felt that he must go out and see if he could not find some meat to eat.