The other lion fell on his side and lay groaning, then roared half-heartedly and dragged himself away.
The second lion had hardly gone when Coutlass descended gingerly from the rock, peering about him, and listening.

He evidently had no suspicion of our presence, for he never once looked in our direction.
It was Schillingschen, not lions, he feared; and Schillingschen, clambering over the top of another rock, watched him as a night-beast eyes its prey.

Another one-act drama was staged, and it was not time for us to come down from the tree yet.
Satisfied he was not followed and that Schillingschen was elsewhere, Coutlass crept from rock to rock toward the little cluster of small ones where, by his own confession, he had seen Fred bury the box.
Schillingschen stalked him through the shadows as actively as a great ape, making no sound, as clearly visible to us as he was invisible to Coutlass.
There was not a trace of mist--nothing to obscure the dim pale light, and as the moon swung higher into space we could see both men's every movement, like the play of marionettes.
Down on his knees at last among the small loose rocks, Coutlass began digging with his fingers--grew weary of that very soon, and drew out the long knife from his boot--dug with that like a frenzied man until from our tree we heard the hard point strike on metal.

Then Schillingschen began to close in, and it was time for us to drop down from the tree.
We made an abominable lot of noise about it, for the tree creaked, and our clothing tore on the thorny projections of limbs that seemed to have grown there since we climbed.

To make matters worse, I stepped off the lowest branch, imagining there was another branch beneath it, and fell headlong, rifle and all, with a clatter and thump that should have alarmed the village half a mile away.