The sound that now came from between Toppan’s teeth and that filled the arena from wall to wall, was the sound that I had heard once before in the Paris Jardin des Plantes at feeding-time--the sound made by the great constrictors, when their huge bodies are looped and coiled like a _reata_ for the throw that never misses, that never relaxes, and that no beast of the field is built strong enough to withstand. All the filthy wickedness and abominable malice of the centuries since the Enemy first entered into that shape that crawls was concentrated in that hoarse, whistling hiss--a hiss that was cold and piercing, like an icicle-made sound. It was not loud, but had in it some sort of penetrating quality that cut through the waves of horrid sounds about us, as the snake-carved prow of a Viking galley might have cut its way through the tumbling eddies of a tide-rip. At the second repetition the lions paused. None better than they knew what was the meaning of that hiss. They had heard it before in their native hunting-grounds in the earlier days of summer, when the first heat lay close over all the jungle like the hollow of the palm of an angry god. Or if they themselves had not heard it, their sires before them had, and the fear of the thing bred into their bones suddenly leaped to life at the sound and gripped them and held them close. When for a third time the sound sung and shrilled in their ears, their heads drew between their shoulders, their great eyes grew small and glittering, the hackles rose and stiffened on their backs, their tails drooped, and they backed slowly to the further side of the cage and cowered there, whining and beaten. Toppan wiped the sweat from the inside of his hands and went into the cage with the keepers and gathered up the panting, broken body, with its twitching fingers and dead, white face and ears, and carried it out. As they lifted it, the handful of pitiful medals dropped from the shredded, gray coat and rattled down upon the floor. In the silence that had now succeeded, it was about the only sound one heard. * * * * * As we sat that evening on the porch of Toppan’s house, in a fashionable suburb of the city, he said, for the third time: “I had that trick from a Mpongwee headman,” and added: “It was while I was at Victoria Falls, waiting to cross the Kalahari Desert.”