on a spit, and as tight as figs in a drum, the two
outermost being evidently selected for their
courage, and neither of them appearing to
appreciate the distinction at all, while, farther on, a
certain old monkey, shut out from this group,
and sent to Coventry by his own species, had
got hold of a great domestic cat, and was sitting
close beside it, the pair being evidently bound
to each other by a firm and well-grounded friendship.

"You don't happen to have lost such a thing
as a finger?" said a certain boy in the employment
of the Zoological Society, arriving at the
house of a gentleman to whom he had been
sent to make the above remarkable inquiry.

The gentleman's hand was bound up, and he
made answer to the boy:

"Yes, I have, and you may go back to your
master and tell him that if he has found it he
may put it in spirits, and keep it as a warning
to others not to act so foolishly as I have done."

"I had observed the gentleman often enough,"
said the superintendent, describing the circumstance
to the four travellers who had placed
themselves under his guidance. "I had
observed him, and had often warned him that to
play with the bears, as he was in the habit of
doing when he came here, was very dangerous;
for he would put his hand into the cage and
tease them and play with them as if they were
tom cats.

"One day I came to the cage here, and saw
lying just outside it, a human finger, with the
tendon hanging to it in a long strip. 'It's that
gentleman's finger,' I said, 'and he's gone away
without saying anything, for he used always to
make light of my warnings, and would tell me
that he knew all about it, and was not afraid a
bit.' And the finger was his, sure enough."

This curious case was not an isolated one.
On another occasion, a finger, with the stretched
tendon hanging to it in the same way, was found
outside the den of the wolves. People will have
the temerity to run these foolish risks, and then
go away, ashamed, even in the midst of their
pain, to own what their rashness has ended in.

The four gentlemen, whose progress we have
been following all this time, had moved so
quietly about, and had excited so little
disturbance among the animals, whose lairs they
had passed, that, as far as might be augured
from the deep silence reigning over the region
inhabited by the great carnivora, their presence
and near approach were not guessed at by those
grand and terrible animals. The dens which
the lions and tigers inhabit have outside them, at
a distance of three or four feet, great heavy
blinds, which are drawn down at night, and so
a narrow passage is formed between the screen
and the bars of the den itself: a passage
accessible only by a locked gate at one end of it.

A dead silence reigned over all this region as
the superintendent, closely followed by the rest
of the party, approached this gate, and even
after the key had been introduced into the lock;
perhaps the animals were listening now, and
scarcely breathed in order that they might hear
the better, but no sooner was the gate thrown
open and the gleam of the lantern admitted into
the narrow passage in front of the dens, than a
yell broke forth of mingled fear and rage, which
was the most terrific thing ever heard by any
member of the little company.

Still anxious to see more, the four gentlemen
and their guides advanced a few paces into the
passage. There were two young lions in the
cage nearest to them, and the terror and fury of
these creatures was really tremendous and awful
to behold. They sprang at the sides of the
cage, they flung themselves against its bars,
they even seemed, in the obscure light, to fly at
each other. They shook the place with their
roaring, and the bars quivered as they dashed
against them.

The contagion, too, seemed to have extended
with the lamp's rays farther on, and in an
instant the whole of those dens were vibrating
with similar sounds. Tigers, leopards, panthers,
burst altogether into one hideous unbearable yell,
till the noise of this and of the shock of weighty
bodies crashing against the bars was of so
deafening a sort, that it was hardly possible to hear
the voice of the guide when he gave the word
to those about him that they must leave the
place at once, or the creatures might knock
themselves to pieces.

And so the cry of "Sauve qui peut!" went
forth, and in another moment the narrow
passage before the dens was left once more in
darkness, but not in silence: the terror and fury
of those disturbed wild beasts being slow to
subside, and breaking forth from time to time
during the night.

This was the cry of terror spoken of in the
introductory portion of this small narrative,
which frighted the Regent's Park "from its
propriety."

But for that speedy retreat from before the
lions' den there is no telling what injury the
terrified and enraged creatures might have done
themselves. We know not what terror is, in
those unreasoning natures; he who gave the
signal for flight, told his companions that there
were some animals of the more timid kinds
who could hardly be moved from one place to
another, so fearfully would they maim
themselves in their mad struggles.

The night wanderings of our little party were
now nearly over. As they passed on, a startled
deer would sometimes jump up from the place
where it lay, and, running to a distance, would
turn at bay to stare at the unusual apparition.
Or, perhaps in some shady enclosure the strange
stripes of the zebra would show for a moment
as the light of the lantern glanced that way, or
the white forms of a group of pelicans would
dimly appear in ghostly stillness by the waterside.
All, to the last moment—and far more
so than in the daytime, when visitors destroy
the illusion—spoke of distant lands and regions
far removed from civilisation; and it was
almost a shock, so great and violent was the
contrast, when at last the four travellers found