We crept on, Bes stopping to cut the arrow from a reed and set it back in the quiver, for it was a good arrow made by himself.  But now he shifted the broad spear to his right hand and in his left held his knife.  We heard the wounded lioness roar not far away.

“She calls her man to help her,” whispered Bes, and as the words left his lips the reeds down wind began to sway, for we were smelt.

They swayed, they parted and, half seen, half hid between their stems, appeared the head of a great, black-maned lion.  I drew the string and shot, this time not in vain, for I heard the arrow thud upon his hide.  Then before I could set another he was on us, reared upon his hind legs and roaring.  As I drew my dagger he struck at me, but I bent down and his paw went over my head.  Then his weight came against me and I fell beneath him, stabbing him in the belly as I fell.  I saw his mighty jaws open to crush my head.  Then they shut again and through them burst a whine like that of a hurt dog.

Bes had driven his spear into the lion’s breast, so deep that the point of it came out through the back.  Still he was not dead, only now it was Bes he sought.  The dwarf ran at him as he reared up again, and casting his great arms about the brute’s body, wrestled with him as man with man.

Then it was, for the first time I think, that I learned all the Ethiopian’s strength.  For he, a dwarf, threw that lion on its back and thrusting his big head beneath the jaws, struggled with it madly.  I was up, the knife still in my hand, and oh!  I too was strong.  Into the throat I drove it, dragging it this way and that, and lo! the lion moaned and died and his blood gushed out over both of us.  Then Bes sat up and laughed, and I too laughed, since neither of us had more than scratches and we had done what men could scarcely do.

“Do you remember, Master,” said Bes when he had finished laughing, as he wiped his brow with some damp moss, “how, once far away up the Nile you charged a mad elephant with a spear and saved me who had fallen, from being trampled to death?”

I, Shabaka, answered that I did. (And I, Allan Quatermain, observing all these things in my psychic trance in the museum of Ragnall Castle, reflected that I also remembered how a certain Hans had saved me from a certain mad elephant, to wit, Jana, not so long before, which just shows how things come round.)

“Yes,” went on Bes, “you saved me from that elephant, though it seemed death to you.  And, Master, I will tell you something now.  That very morning I had tried to poison you, only you would not wait to eat because the elephants were near.”

“Did you?” I asked idly.  “Why?”

“Because two years before you captured me in battle with some of my people, and as I was misshapen, or for pity’s sake, spared my life and made me your slave.  Well, I who had been a chief, a very great chief, Master, did not wish to remain a slave and did wish to avenge my people’s blood.  Therefore I tried to poison you, and that very day you saved my life, offering for it your own.”