It was not a very big tree that we selected, but it was the biggest; it had low branches, and the merit of being easy to climb.

When the pale latter half of the moon announced itself we could dimly make out from the upper branches all of the flat ground where the camp had been.  There was no sign of Coutlass.  None of Schillingschen.  A lioness and two enormous lions stood facing one another in a triangle, almost exactly on the spot where the larger tent had stood, not fifty yards from us.

“Gee!"’ whispered Will excitedly.  “We nearly stumbled on ’em!”

“Shoot!” I whispered.  My own position on the branch was so insecure that I could not have brought my rifle into use without making a prodigious noise.  Will shook his head.

“I can see Coutlass now!  Look at that rock—­he’s hiding behind it—­see, he’s climbing!  And look, there’s Schillingschen!”

Neither man was aware of the other’s presence, or of ours.  They were out of sight of each other, Coutlass on the very rocks against which we had leaned to watch the tent the afternoon before, and neither man really out of reach of anything with claws that cared to go after them in earnest.

The arrival of the dim moon seemed to give the lions their cue for action.  The lioness turned half away, as if weary of waiting, and then lay down full-length to watch as one lion sprang at the other with a roar like the wrath of warring worlds.  They met in mid-air, claw to claw, and went down together—­a roaring, snarling, eight-legged, two-tailed catastrophe—­never apart—­not still an instant—­tearing, beating—­rolling over and over—­emitting bellows of mingled rage and agony whenever the teeth of one or other brute went home.

Even as shadows fighting in the shadows they were terrible to watch.  They shook the very earth and air, as if they owned all the primeval bestial force of all the animals.  And the she-lion lay watching them, her eyes like burning yellow coals, not moving a muscle that we could see.

Iron could not have withstood the blows; the thunder of them reached us in the tree!  Steel ropes could not have endured the strain as claws went home, and the brutes wrenched, ripped, and yelled in titanic agony.  Their fury increased.  Wounds did not seem to enfeeble them.  Nothing checked the speed of the fighting an instant, until suddenly the lioness stood erect, gave a long loud call like a cat’s, and turned and vanished.

She had seen.  She knew.  Like a spring loosed from its containing box one of the lions freed himself in mid-air and hurtled clear, landing on all-fours and hurrying away after the lioness with a bad limp.  The other lion fell on his side and lay groaning, then roared half-heartedly and dragged himself away.

The second lion had hardly gone when Coutlass descended gingerly from the rock, peering about him, and listening.  He evidently had no suspicion of our presence, for he never once looked in our direction.  It was Schillingschen, not lions, he feared; and Schillingschen, clambering over the top of another rock, watched him as a night-beast eyes its prey.  Another one-act drama was staged, and it was not time for us to come down from the tree yet.