About nine o'clock the next morning an incident occurred which might
have terminated my career in one way, and did, ultimately, end it in
another.
I had been exercising my lions and putting them through their paces,
and had noticed no unusual insubordination among them, when suddenly,
Timour Melek, a big Algerian lion, flew at me without the slightest
provocation or warning.
Fortunately I had a training-chair in my hand, on which Timour had
just been sitting, and I had time to thrust it into his face. Thrice
with incredible swiftness he struck the iron-chair, right, left, and
right, as a cat strikes, then seized it in his teeth. At the same
moment I brought my loaded whip heavily across his nose.
"Down, Timour Melek! Down! down! down!" I said, steadily,
accompanying each word with a blow of the whip across the nose.
The brute had only hurt himself when he struck the chair, and now,
under the blows raining on his sensitive nose, he doubtless remembered
similar episodes in his early training, and shrank back, nearly
deafening me with his roars. I followed, punishing him, and he fled
towards the low iron grating which separated the training-cage from
the night-quarters.
This I am now inclined to believe was a mistake of judgment on my
part. I should have driven him into a corner and thoroughly cowed him,
using the training-chair if necessary, and trusting to my two
assistants with their irons, who had already closed up on either side
of the cage.
I was not in perfect trim that morning. Not that I felt nervous in the
least, nor had I any lack of self-confidence, but I was not myself. I
had never in my life entered a lion-cage feeling as I did that
morning--an indifference which almost amounted to laziness, an apathy
which came close to melancholy.
The lions knew I was not myself--they had been aware of it as soon as
I set foot in their cage; and I knew it. But my strange apathy only
increased as I went about my business, perfectly aware all the time
that, with lions born in captivity, the unexpected is always to be
expected.
Timour Melek was now close to the low iron door between the
partitions; the other lions had become unusually excited, bounding at
a heavy gallop around the cage, or clinging to the bars like enormous
cats.
Then, as I faced Timour, ready to force him backward through the door
into the night-quarters, something in the blank glare of his eyes
seemed to fascinate me. I had an absurd sensation that he was slipping
away from me--escaping; that I no longer dominated him nor had
authority. It was not panic, nor even fear; it was a faint
paralysis--temporary, fortunately; for at that instant instinct saved
me; I struck the lion a terrific blow across the nose and whirled
around, chair uplifted, just in time to receive the charge of Empress
Khatoun, consort of Timour.
She struck the iron-bound chair, doubling it up like crumpled paper,
hurling me headlong, not to the floor of the cage, but straight
through the sliding-bars which Speed had just flung open with a shout.
As for me, I landed violently on my back in the sawdust, the breath
knocked clean out of me.
When I could catch my breath again I realized that there was no time
to waste. Speed looked at me angrily, but I jerked open the grating,
flung another chair into the cage, leaped in, and, singling out
Empress Khatoun, I sailed into her with passionless thoroughness,
punishing her to a stand-still, while the other lions, Aicha,
Marghouz, Timour, and Genghis Khan snarled and watched me steadily.
As I emerged from the cage Speed asked me whether I was hurt, and I
gasped out that I was not.
"What went wrong?" he persisted.
"Timour and that young lioness--no, _I_ went wrong; the lions knew it
at once; something failed me, I don't know what; upon my soul, Speed,
I don't know what happened."
"You lost your nerve?"
"No, not that. Timour began looking at me in a peculiar way--he
certainly dominated me for an instant--for a tenth of a second; and
then Khatoun flew at me before I could control Timour--"