Then came the ordeal.  It arrived in the shape of two knobs, that just were suddenly, and remained, motionless in the mocking moonlight, on the surface of the water.  It might have been merely some projection from a half-sunken log.  It might, but—­well, there had grown in the air an unspeakable stench of musk, and that wasn’t there before the knobs showed up.

Both lion cubs saw, both little royal ones smelt, and in some dim way, warned probably by a terrible knowledge handed down to them from their ancestors, both baby swimmers knew.  Terror—­real terror, of the white-livered, surrender-or-stampede-blindly-at-any-price kind—­could never, it seems to me, come into those fine, regal eyes; but the nearest approach that was possible occurred in that instant, and they swam.  Ah, how those infant lions swam!  What had gone before was mere paddling; and whether or not they had ever swum before in their short lives—­and I doubt it more than a little—­there could be no question about them now; they swam like practiced hands, and almost as fast.

Followed a pause, terrifying enough in all conscience, and then, slowly, silently as a submarine’s conning-tower goes under, so dived those knobs, and vanished almost, not quite, without a ripple.

The cool night-air showed the breath coming from the broad, brave, water-frilled cubs’ heads in gasps.  The silence gave away their frantic panting.  You could literally see them straining every baby nerve and muscle, could note the jerks with which they fairly kicked themselves along.  And the opposite bank, a black wall of bush and reeds, was very near now, yet far—­oh, how far, to them!

Ssee-shhrr-r-rr-r-shrhh!

As a torpedo hurtles hissing along barely below the surface of the water, so hurtled the head—­the head with its wicked eyes on knobs; the head with its vast, scaly, long snout, its raised nostrils at the tip, its shuddering array of jagged teeth, its awful, armed, diabolical aspect of conscious power—­straight at the king’s son.  Without warning had it come, and with still less had it attacked.

Swim, oh, swim, little king’s son, for your very life!  But the king’s son did not swim—­at least, not in that sense.  He turned.  Yes, that is right—­turned; and the monstrosity of the armed snout, that same being a crocodile, of course, was upon him even as he did so.  There would have been no time to turn after—­no life!  Still, the king’s son may not have known that.  Maybe he turned, as a man attacked by a dog does, because he felt, in a cold, nervy sort of spasm all up his spine, the terrible defenselessness of his hind-limbs.  And as he turned, he struck—­bat-bat!—­struck with all his talons unsheathed; struck with every ounce and grain of power, and force of brain to back that power, in his system; struck as only a cornered cat can strike; struck like a—­lion.

The result was astounding.

The crocodile had aimed, true to a hair—­you bet, he being a croc.—­to grab the king’s son’s hindlegs, and pull him under.  He had not reckoned on the turn, and the turn did it.  His snout struck hindlegs, which were not where they ought, by his calculations, to have been, but were four or five inches away to one side.