“Not overmatched by ten aurochs!” cried the Persian, looking fairly in the king’s eye. “But will not the chase pass some other way?” “The game _I seek_,” flew the answer, “will pass nowhere else.” Darius’s fingers itched to send one arrow through that royal mantle then, and let all Babylon do its worst. Suddenly it dawned on him that if he were tensely strung, the king was likewise. While he ever questioned, “How will the bolt fall?” Belshazzar’s one thought was, “How much does the envoy suspect?” They each would have given a hundred talents for one peep into the heart of the other. The thought appeared so comical to the prince that, to Belshazzar’s wonderment, he began to laugh; and that laugh refreshed him and strengthened him like a draught of new wine. “Crash!” A vast lumbering object was dashing through the trees. They heard thickets shivering; birds flew screaming from their nests. The noise neared rapidly. Again the thunderous bellow—close now, and deep. The ground shook with the thunder, and an answering quiver ran through the Persian. Peril or no peril, he had never before faced an auroch, and his hunter’s instinct was strong within him. Belshazzar’s horse pricked his ears, snorted, and began to rear and plunge. The king barely controlled him. The Persian’s beast started to do likewise, but felt the touch and press of an iron hand and iron knees so powerful that all the spirit was crushed out of him. Not so with Belshazzar. “Marduk blast me,” rang his curse, “if I do not flay Rabit for giving me this beast!” But the horse only plunged more wildly. One last thunder! Darius saw the saplings bowing, the leaves shook down as a falling cloud; out from betwixt the trees shot a beast the like of which the prince had never beheld before. A bull, but a bull of monster size—his horns the span of a bow, his hide mud-brown; out of his mouth, and with the lolling red tongue, one almost saw the live flames breathing, with more flame in the huge balls of his eyes. To see this took one instant. The auroch crashed on until face to face with the two riders, then halted in his shambling run not twenty paces from them, dropped his horns, and lashed his flanks with his tail. Darius wondered no more that mastiffs did not love to bring him to bay. The Persian’s arrow lay on the bowstring, but he did not shoot. All the trembling had gone out of him. As if by a new sense, he knew that there was something stirring, creeping, in the thicket behind him. Did his ears fail when they heard a human whisper, low, but distinct—a whisper as of a man urging on his hound—“Now!” Darius did not turn his head. His horse, subdued by his master touch, stood stock still, while the bull glared at them. But Belshazzar was in deadly straits. Try as he might, his beast would not stand steady, and, with the horse plunging underneath him, what chance to strike the bull with the short sword? The king’s face turned livid as he struggled.