Other voices became audible in the same moment behind
me, and Timothy Maloney arrived, breathless, less than half dressed,
and carrying another lantern that had gone out on the way from being
banged against a tree. Dawn was just breaking, and a chill wind blew in
from the sea. Heavy black clouds drove low overhead. The scene of confusion may be better imagined than described. Questions
in frightened voices filled the air against this background of
suppressed weeping. Briefly--Joan’s silk tent had been torn, and the
girl was in a state bordering upon hysterics. Somewhat reassured by
our noisy presence, however,--for she was plucky at heart,--she pulled
herself together and tried to explain what had happened; and her broken
words, told there on the edge of night and morning upon this wild
island ridge, were oddly thrilling and distressingly convincing. “Something touched me and I woke,” she said simply, but in a voice
still hushed and broken with the terror of it, “something pushing
against the tent; I felt it through the canvas. There was the same
sniffing and scratching as before, and I felt the tent give a little
as when wind shakes it. 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 flame 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 glowing 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
Bosun’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.