The voice was

really horrible, breaking the peace and silence with its shrill

clamour. In less than ten seconds I was half dressed and out of my

tent. The screaming had stopped abruptly, but I knew the general

direction, and ran as fast as the darkness would allow over to the

women’s quarters, and on getting close I heard sounds of suppressed

weeping. It was Joan’s voice. And just as I came up I saw Mrs. Maloney,

marvellously attired, fumbling with a lantern. 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 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.