The attendant now proposed as a last resource that they should strangle the cubs and throw them out to the lion. This was indeed a desperate experiment, but Mujahid consented that it should be tried. The attendant accordingly unwound the turban from his forehead and twisted it tightly in the form of a rope. The cubs were found asleep in a corner of the cave; but though so young, their strength was such as to render the process of strangulation a thing of some difficulty. A noose was made in the centre of the twisted turban, and being passed over the cub’s head, was pulled at either end by Mahmood Afghan and the attendant, the prince meanwhile applying his vast strength to keep the lion from displacing the stone from the entrance. Both the cubs being at length strangled, were forced through the aperture, and flung before the enraged parent. The moment it saw its offspring, the lion quitted the stone, stood over the cubs, and begun to purr, licking their heads for a few moments with the greatest tenderness. After a while, seeing they did not move, it turned them over gently with its paw, erected its ears, and looked at them intently for an instant; and then, as of a sudden becoming conscious that they were dead, erected its head, raised its nose in the air, and howled with a piteous expression of agony. The wounded tongue hung over its jaws, still suffused with gore, and tears filled the eyes of the noble beast as it again bent down its head to gaze upon the work of destruction. Its emotion soon subsided, and was succeeded by the most frightful rage. It dashed against the barrier with increasing fury, and its roarings were continued without intermission. It now required the whole strength of the prince and his two companions to keep the stone from giving way under the furious assaults of the lion. After a while, as if exhausted with its energies, it retreated a few feet from the aperture, lay down upon its belly beside the dead cubs, raised its head towards the skies, as if invoking a silent curse upon the destroyers of its offspring, and sent its voice among the surrounding echoes, which multiplied it into one fearful and prolonged evocation of blended fury and distress. In a short time it started to its feet, waved its tail, and looking forward, ceased its horrible roar. Upon turning his eyes toward the spot, the prince perceived another lion advancing at a rapid trot in the direction of the cavern. “This,” cried Mahmood, “is no doubt the mother of the cubs, and we have, if possible, more to dread from her fury than from that of the male savage. We have now no chance of our lives but by continuing where we are until the lions shall retire. They will probably drag the cubs away after the first burst of grief for the loss of their young shall have subsided.”