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sleeve of his bush-jacket.
    ‘He’s just playing,’ Hal said. ‘You’ll have to get used to that if you want to make a pal of a lion. They love to play - but they don’t know their own strength.’
    Now the affectionate little beast was licking Roger’s hand. His tongue was like sandpaper. Three licks, and Roger was beginning to lose his skin. He withdrew his hand.
    ‘Before this monster eats me up,’ he said, ‘we’d better give it some food. How do we get some mother’s milk?’
    “This will have to do,’ Hal said. He took down a can of milk, opened it, and held it under Flop’s nose. The cub raised his nose in the air and said, ‘Ng-ng-ng.’
    ‘If I’m not mistaken,’ Hal said, ‘that’s lion language for “No”. Perhaps if we warm the milk he’ll think better of it’
    After the milk was warmed on the little camp stove, another problem arose. How to get the milk into the cub.
    Some was poured into a dish and placed before the animal. Flop sniffed it and apparently wanted it, but didn’t know how to get it. Roger pressed the cub’s mouth down into the milk. The cub jerked his head free, scattering drops of milk from his whiskers. He had not learned how to lap up liquid in cat fashion. He was used to sucking his dinner from his mother’s teats.
    Roger got a spoon. ‘If you’ll hold him,’ he said, ‘I can spoon the milk into his mouth.’
    That’s force-feeding,’ Hal said. ‘He should be fed every three hours. To feed him that way would take too much of our time - besides, no animal likes to be forced. We’ve got to give him an artificial mother. He’s used to sucking his dinner. Now how can we let him suck?’
    ‘If we had a piece of rubber tubing—’
    ‘But we haven’t.’
    ‘I know what.’ Roger said. ‘There’s an artificial mother right back of the tent.’
    He went out and came back in a moment with a stem of bamboo about a half inch in diameter. He cut it down to a length of a few inches and looked through it to make sure that it was not closed by any partition. He rounded off the upper end so that it would be comfortable in the cub’s mouth. Then he put one end in the little animal’s mouth and the other end in the milk.
    The little beast instinctively sucked and up came the milk. He clamped the hollow bamboo between his two front paws and settled down contently to his dinner.
    Roger saw that Flop was not gripping the tube with his toenails but with a claw a little farther up on the inside of each leg. ‘I didn’t know a lion had claws up there,’ Roger said. “They’re called dew-claws,’ said Hal. ‘What are they for? They’re too far up to touch the ground.’
    ‘And yet, they’re the best claws a lion has, and the most dangerous. On a full-grown lion they can be two inches long. They’re usually kept folded against the lion’s legs, but the lion can extend them at right angles. They are as sharp as razors and very strong. A lion can rip a man open with one stroke of these terrible hooks.’ ‘But the cub is using them to hold the tube.’ ‘Yes. And when he grows up he’ll use them to hold his meat while he eats it. They’re something like a man’s thumbs. Just as you couldn’t hold anything without your thumbs, a lion Would have trouble hanging on to anything without his dew-claws. So you see, the Hon is well armed. But when he closes his mouth to hide those terrific fangs of his, and draws up his claws, and folds in his dews-claws, he looks as if he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ ‘Does he have any other concealed weapons.’ ‘One more. Feel the end of your cub’s tail.’ Roger did so. ‘Ouch!’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s got a needle there.’ It was hidden in the little tuft of black hair at
    end of the youngster’s tail. ‘What’s the idea of that?’
    ‘Just to protect his rear. The lion is a great tail-switcher. If an enemy comes up too close behind him it is apt to get punctured by that needle. It hurts like the sting of a