Roughly she shook her.
"Esmeralda! Esmeralda!" she cried. "Help me, or we are lost."
Esmeralda opened her eyes. The first object they
encountered was the dripping fangs of the hungry lioness.
With a horrified scream the poor woman rose to her hands and
knees, and in this position scurried across the room, shrieking:
"O Gaberelle! O Gaberelle!" at the top of her lungs.
Esmeralda weighed some two hundred and eighty pounds,
and her extreme haste, added to her extreme corpulency,
produced a most amazing result when Esmeralda elected to
travel on all fours.
For a moment the lioness remained quiet with intense gaze
directed upon the flitting Esmeralda, whose goal appeared to
be the cupboard, into which she attempted to propel her huge
bulk; but as the shelves were but nine or ten inches apart, she
only succeeded in getting her head in; whereupon, with a final
screech, which paled the jungle noises into insignificance, she
fainted once again.
With the subsidence of Esmeralda the lioness renewed her
efforts to wriggle her huge bulk through the weakening lattice.
The girl, standing pale and rigid against the farther wall,
sought with ever-increasing terror for some loophole of escape.
Suddenly her hand, tight-pressed against her bosom, felt
the hard outline of the revolver that Clayton had left with
her earlier in the day.
Quickly she snatched it from its hiding-place, and, leveling
it full at the lioness's face, pulled the trigger.
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