LION STORIES.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17242, 29 October 1927, Page 16 (Supplement)

LION STORIES.

A BITTER FIGHT. Again and again events occur which compel us to say that the old legend of Androcles and the Lion may have been true after all (says a writer in an exchange). : • . . At a circus performance at Leicester Captain Wombwell entered a cage, in which were a mother lion and two ailing cubs and, divided by a partition from the rest, a great male lion, Wallace. Gracious Creature. While their owner was ministering; to the cubs Wallace suddenly broke down the intervening woodwork, entered the cage, and launched himself at the man, badly lacerating his back and shoulders. The attack was so unexpected that Wombwell was helpless, and he must have been killed had not the lioness come to ‘his aid. She has a great affection for her owner, and seemed to know that he was helping, her sick babies to health. But such a crisis, is always dangerous* for when one lion attacks all are Up t to do so. The mother lion, however, proved a reasoning, gracious creature, and decided ,to defend the man. She sprang fiercely on Wallace, and with teeth and claws furiously, dragged him off his victim. ' In the battle .which followed between the two splendid beasts Wombwell was able to escape, and, the combat being ended, peace was restored. Wombwell,- who had been similarly saved by a lioness three years before, has once again cause to believe in the gratitude, memory,, and .reason stored in the stormy lion heart. THE FINEST OF LION STORIES. The incident recalled to the mind of the writer the finest/ of all lion stories, told to him by Seeth, the, great German trainer. Seeth had to present a spectacle in Paris representing a scene from the Colosseum arena in Rome, with dummy human figures stuffed with,.horseflesh and flung to the- lions. His part was to enter the arena when the excitement was at its height, drive the animals from their prey, pacify them, and make them perform. ' The lions numbered 19, but’of these only six were Seeth’s; the 13 others had been hired. According to plan Seeth entered the arena and closed the Iron gate behind him. As he did so he slipped on a damp patch of sawdust, failing with his back against the gate, and so'preventing its being opened. A crowd of lions swept down upon him and began to eat him as he lay, but up sprang. Seeth’s favourite lion, Vulcan, arid fought a bitter fight for his master's' life; he stood over him and did battle wiLh the whole 18. The Valiant Vulcan. One brute could not be driven off; It lay across Seeth’s legs, biting horrib.y.' Tlie man lay on his right side, with one arm pinned beneath him, but a crowbar was passed in to him, and with his left hand he drove it clean through the jaws and throat of the lion, killing it. Eventually Seeth was ’able to moye and the gate was opened. He recovered, and so did the valiant Vulcan, though the. lion’s scars were as numerous as the spots on a Dalmatian dog. Seeth firmly believed in Androcles and his lion. “That lion was simply an earlier Vulcan,” he used to say; and Wombwell’s lioness seems a later edition, true to a noble type.