I heard breathing--very loud, very heavy
breathing--and then came a sudden great tearing blow, and the canvas
ripped open close to my face." She had instantly dashed out through the open flap and screamed at the
top of her voice, thinking the creature had actually got into the tent. But nothing was visible, she declared, and she heard not the faintest
sound of an animal making off under cover of the darkness. The brief
account seemed to exercise a paralysing effect upon us all as we
listened to it. I can see the dishevelled group to this day, the wind
blowing the women's hair, and Maloney craning his head forward to
listen, and his wife, open-mouthed and gasping, leaning against a pine
tree. "Come over to the stockade and we'll get the fire going," I said;
"that's the first thing," for we were all shaking with the cold in our
scanty garments. And at that moment Sangree arrived wrapped in a blanket
and carrying his gun; he was still drunken with sleep. "The dog again," Maloney explained briefly, forestalling his questions;
"been at Joan's tent. Torn it, by Gad! this time. It's time we did
something." He went on mumbling confusedly to himself. Sangree gripped his gun and looked about swiftly in the darkness. I saw
his eyes aflame in the glare of the flickering lanterns. He made a
movement as though to start out and hunt--and kill. Then his glance fell
on the girl crouching on the ground, her face hidden in her hands, and
there leaped into his features an expression of savage anger that
transformed them. He could have faced a dozen lions with a walking stick
at that moment, and again I liked him for the strength of his anger, his
self-control, and his hopeless devotion. But I stopped him going off on a blind and useless chase. "Come and help me start the fire, Sangree," I said, anxious also to
relieve the girl of our presence; and a few minutes later the ashes,
still growing from the night's fire, had kindled the fresh wood, and
there was a blaze that warmed us well while it also lit up the
surrounding trees within a radius of twenty yards. "I heard nothing," he whispered; "what in the world do you think it is? It surely can't be only a dog!" "We'll find that out later," I said, as the others came up to the
grateful warmth; "the first thing is to make as big a fire as we can." Joan was calmer now, and her mother had put on some warmer, and less
miraculous, garments. And while they stood talking in low voices
Maloney and I slipped off to examine the tent. There was little enough
to see, but that little was unmistakable. Some animal had scratched up
the ground at the head of the tent, and with a great blow of a powerful
paw--a paw clearly provided with good claws--had struck the silk and
torn it open. There was a hole large enough to pass a fist and arm
through. "It can't be far away," Maloney said excitedly. "We'll organise a hunt
at once; this very minute." We hurried back to the fire, Maloney talking boisterously about his
proposed hunt. "There's nothing like prompt action to dispel alarm," he
whispered in my ear; and then turned to the rest of us. "We'll hunt the island from end to end at once," he said, with
excitement; "that's what we'll do. The beast can't be far away. And the
Bo'sun's Mate and Joan must come too, because they can't be left alone. Hubbard, you take the right shore, and you, Sangree, the left, and I'll
go in the middle with the women. In this way we can stretch clean across
the ridge, and nothing bigger than a rabbit can possibly escape us." He
was extraordinarily excited, I thought. Anything affecting Joan, of
course, stirred him prodigiously. "Get your guns and we'll start the
drive at once," he cried. He lit another lantern and handed one each to
his wife and Joan, and while I ran to fetch my gun I heard him singing
to himself with the excitement of it all. Meanwhile the dawn had come on quickly. It made the flickering lanterns
look pale. The wind, too, was rising, and I heard the trees moaning
overhead and the waves breaking with increasing clamour on the shore. In
the lagoon the boat dipped and splashed, and the sparks from the fire
were carried aloft in a stream and scattered far and wide. We made our way to the extreme end of the island, measured our distances
carefully, and then began to advance. None of us spoke. Sangree and I,
with cocked guns, watched the shore lines, and all within easy touch and
speaking distance. It was a slow and blundering drive, and there were
many false alarms, but after the best part of half an hour we stood on
the farther end, having made the complete tour, and without putting up
so much as a squirrel. Certainly there was no living creature on that
island but ourselves. "I know what it is!" cried Maloney, looking out over the dim expanse of
grey sea, and speaking with the air of a man making a discovery; "it's a
dog from one of the farms on the larger islands"--he pointed seawards
where the archipelago thickened--"and it's escaped and turned wild. Our
fires and voices attracted it, and it's probably half starved as well as
savage, poor brute!" No one said anything in reply, and he began to sing again very low to
himself. The point where we stood--a huddled, shivering group--faced the wider
channels that led to the open sea and Finland. The grey dawn had broken
in earnest at last, and we could see the racing waves with their angry
crests of white. The surrounding islands showed up as dark masses in the
distance, and in the east, almost as Maloney spoke, the sun came up with
a rush in a stormy and magnificent sky of red and gold. Against this
splashed and gorgeous background black clouds, shaped like fantastic and
legendary animals, filed past swiftly in a tearing stream, and to this
day I have only to close my eyes to see again that vivid and hurrying
procession in the air. All about us the pines made black splashes
against the sky. It was an angry sunrise. Rain, indeed, had already
begun to fall in big drops. We turned, as by a common instinct, and, without speech, made our way
back slowly to the stockade, Maloney humming snatches of his songs,
Sangree in front with his gun, prepared to shoot at a moment's notice,
and the women floundering in the rear with myself and the extinguished
lanterns. Yet it was only a dog! Really, it was most singular when one came to reflect soberly upon it
all. Events, say the occultists, have souls, or at least that
agglomerate life due to the emotions and thoughts of all concerned in
them, so that cities, and even whole countries, have great astral shapes
which may become visible to the eye of vision; and certainly here, the
soul of this drive--this vain, blundering, futile drive--stood somewhere
between ourselves and--laughed. All of us heard that laugh, and all of us tried hard to smother the
sound, or at least to ignore it.