Three More John Silence Stories — The Camp of the Dog Part 2

II

Whether Mrs. Maloney's tent door opened south or east I think she never discovered, for it is quite certain she always slept with the flap tightly fastened; I only know that my own little "five by seven, all silk" faced due east, because next morning the sun, pouring in as only the wilderness sun knows how to pour, woke me early, and a moment later, with a short run over soft moss and a flying dive from the granite ledge, I was swimming in the most sparkling water imaginable.

It was barely four o'clock, and the sun came down a long vista of blue islands that led out to the open sea and Finland.

Nearer by rose the wooded domes of our own property, still capped and wreathed with smoky trails of fast-melting mist, and looking as fresh as though it was the morning of Mrs. Maloney's Sixth Day and they had just issued, clean and brilliant, from the hands of the great Architect.

In the open spaces the ground was drenched with dew, and from the sea a cool salt wind stole in among the trees and set the branches trembling in an atmosphere of shimmering silver.

The tents shone white where the sun caught them in patches.

Below lay the lagoon, still dreaming of the summer night; in the open the fish were jumping busily, sending musical ripples towards the shore; and in the air hung the magic of dawn--silent, incommunicable.

I lit the fire, so that an hour later the clergyman should find good ashes to stir his porridge over, and then set forth upon an examination of the island, but hardly had I gone a dozen yards when I saw a figure standing a little in front of me where the sunlight fell in a pool among the trees.

It was Joan.

She had already been up an hour, she told me, and had bathed before the last stars had left the sky.

I saw at once that the new spirit of this solitary region had entered into her, banishing the fears of the night, for her face was like the face of a happy denizen of the wilderness, and her eyes stainless and shining.

Her feet were bare, and drops of dew she had shaken from the branches hung in her loose-flying hair.

Obviously she had come into her own.

"I've been all over the island," she announced laughingly, "and there are two things wanting."

"You're a good judge, Joan.

What are they?"

"There's no animal life, and there's no--water."

"They go together," I said.

"Animals don't bother with a rock like this unless there's a spring on it."

And as she led me from place to place, happy and excited, leaping adroitly from rock to rock, I was glad to note that my first impressions were correct.

She made no reference to our conversation of the night before.

The new spirit had driven out the old.

There was no room in her heart for fear or anxiety, and Nature had everything her own way.

The island, we found, was some three-quarters of a mile from point to point, built in a circle, or wide horseshoe, with an opening of twenty feet at the mouth of the lagoon.

Pine-trees grew thickly all over, but here and there were patches of silver birch, scrub oak, and considerable colonies of wild raspberry and gooseberry bushes.

The two ends of the horseshoe formed bare slabs of smooth granite running into the sea and forming dangerous reefs just below the surface, but the rest of the island rose in a forty-foot ridge and sloped down steeply to the sea on either side, being nowhere more than a hundred yards wide.

The outer shore-line was much indented with numberless coves and bays and sandy beaches, with here and there caves and precipitous little cliffs against which the sea broke in spray and thunder.

But the inner shore, the shore of the lagoon, was low and regular, and so well protected by the wall of trees along the ridge that no storm could ever send more than a passing ripple along its sandy marges.

Eternal shelter reigned there.

On one of the other islands, a few hundred yards away--for the rest of the party slept late this first morning, and we took to the canoe--we discovered a spring of fresh water untainted by the brackish flavour of the Baltic, and having thus solved the most important problem of the Camp, we next proceeded to deal with the second--fish.

And in half an hour we reeled in and turned homewards, for we had no means of storage, and to clean more fish than may be stored or eaten in a day is no wise occupation for experienced campers.

And as we landed towards six o'clock we heard the clergyman singing as usual and saw his wife and Sangree shaking out their blankets in the sun, and dressed in a fashion that finally dispelled all memories of streets and civilisation.

"The Little People lit the fire for me," cried Maloney, looking natural and at home in his ancient flannel suit and breaking off in the middle of his singing, "so I've got the porridge going--and this time it's _not_ burnt."

We reported the discovery of water and held up the fish.

"Good!

Good again!"

he cried.

"We'll have the first decent breakfast we've had this year.

Sangree'll clean 'em in no time, and the Bo'sun's Mate--" "Will fry them to a turn," laughed the voice of Mrs. Maloney, appearing on the scene in a tight blue jersey and sandals, and catching up the frying-pan.

Her husband always called her the Bo'sun's Mate in Camp, because it was her duty, among others, to pipe all hands to meals.

"And as for you, Joan," went on the happy man, "you look like the spirit of the island, with moss in your hair and wind in your eyes, and sun and stars mixed in your face."

He looked at her with delighted admiration.

"Here, Sangree, take these twelve, there's a good fellow, they're the biggest; and we'll have 'em in butter in less time than you can say Baltic island!"

I watched the Canadian as he slowly moved off to the cleaning pail.

His eyes were drinking in the girl's beauty, and a wave of passionate, almost feverish, joy passed over his face, expressive of the ecstasy of true worship more than anything else.

Perhaps he was thinking that he still had three weeks to come with that vision always before his eyes;

perhaps he was thinking of his dreams in the night.

I cannot say.

But I noticed the curious mingling of yearning and happiness in his eyes, and the strength of the impression touched my curiosity.

Something in his face held my gaze for a second, something to do with its intensity.

That so timid, so gentle a personality should conceal so virile a passion almost seemed to require explanation.

But the impression was momentary, for that first breakfast in Camp permitted no divided attentions, and I dare swear that the porridge, the tea, the Swedish "flatbread," and the fried fish flavoured with points of frizzled bacon, were better than any meal eaten elsewhere that day in the whole world.

The first clear day in a new camp is always a furiously busy one, and we soon dropped into the routine upon which in large measure the real comfort of every one depends.

About the cooking-fire, greatly improved with stones from the shore, we built a high stockade consisting of upright poles thickly twined with branches, the roof lined with moss and lichen and weighted with rocks, and round the interior we made low wooden seats so that we could lie round the fire even in rain and eat our meals in peace.

Paths, too, outlined themselves from tent to tent, from the bathing places and the landing stage, and a fair division of the island was decided upon between the quarters of the men and the women.

Wood was stacked, awkward trees and boulders removed, hammocks slung, and tents strengthened.

In a word, Camp was established, and duties were assigned and accepted as though we expected to live on this Baltic island for years to come and the smallest detail of the Community life was important.

Moreover, as the Camp came into being, this sense of a community developed, proving that we were a definite whole, and not merely separate human beings living for a while in tents upon a desert island.

Each fell willingly into the routine.

Sangree, as by natural selection, took upon himself the cleaning of the fish and the cutting of the wood into lengths sufficient for a day's use.

And he did it well.

The pan of water was never without a fish, cleaned and scaled, ready to fry for whoever was hungry; the nightly fire never died down for lack of material to throw on without going farther afield to search.

And Timothy, once reverend, caught the fish and chopped down the trees.

He also assumed responsibility for the condition of the boat, and did it so thoroughly that nothing in the little cutter was ever found wanting.

And when, for any reason, his presence was in demand, the first place to look for him was--in the boat, and there, too, he was usually found, tinkering away with sheets, sails, or rudder and singing as he tinkered.

'Nor was the "reading" neglected; for most mornings there came a sound of droning voices form the white tent by the raspberry bushes, which signified that Sangree, the tutor, and whatever other man chanced to be in the party at the time, were hard at it with history or the classics.

And while Mrs. Maloney, also by natural selection, took charge of the larder and the kitchen, the mending and general supervision of the rough comforts, she also made herself peculiarly mistress of the megaphone which summoned to meals and carried her voice easily from one end of the island to the other; and in her hours of leisure she daubed the surrounding scenery on to a sketching block with all the honesty and devotion of her determined but unreceptive soul.

Joan, meanwhile, Joan, elusive creature of the wilds, became I know not exactly what.

She did plenty of work in the Camp, yet seemed to have no very precise duties.

She was everywhere and anywhere.

Sometimes she slept in her tent, sometimes under the stars with a blanket.

She knew every inch of the island and kept turning up in places where she was least expected--for ever wandering about, reading her books in sheltered corners, making little fires on sunless days to "worship by to the gods," as she put it, ever finding new pools to dive and bathe in, and swimming day and night in the warm and waveless lagoon like a fish in a huge tank.

She went bare-legged and bare-footed, with her hair down and her skirts caught up to the knees, and if ever a human being turned into a jolly savage within the compass of a single week, Joan Maloney was certainly that human being.

She ran wild.

So completely, too, was she possessed by the strong spirit of the place that the little human fear she had yielded to so strangely on our arrival seemed to have been utterly dispossessed.

As I hoped and expected, she made no reference to our conversation of the first evening.

Sangree bothered her with no special attentions, and after all they were very little together.

His behaviour was perfect in that respect, and I, for my part, hardly gave the matter another thought.

Joan was ever a prey to vivid fancies of one kind or another, and this was one of them.

Mercifully for the happiness of all concerned, it had melted away before the spirit of busy, active life and deep content that reigned over the island.

Every one was intensely alive, and peace was upon all.

* * * * * Meanwhile the effect of the camp-life began to tell.

Always a searching test of character, its results, sooner or later, are infallible, for it acts upon the soul as swiftly and surely as the hypo bath upon the negative of a photograph.

A readjustment of the personal forces takes place quickly; some parts of the personality go to sleep, others wake up: but the first sweeping change that the primitive life brings about is that the artificial portions of the character shed themselves one after another like dead skins.

Attitudes and poses that seemed genuine in the city drop away.

The mind, like the body, grows quickly hard, simple, uncomplex.

And in a camp as primitive and close to nature as ours was, these effects became speedily visible.

Some folk, of course, who talk glibly about the simple life when it is safely out of reach, betray themselves in camp by for ever peering about for the artificial excitements of civilisation which they miss. Some get bored at once; some grow slovenly; some reveal the animal in most unexpected fashion; and some, the select few, find themselves in very short order and are happy.

And, in our little party, we could flatter ourselves that we all belonged to the last category, so far as the general effect was concerned.

Only there were certain other changes as well, varying with each individual, and all interesting to note.

It was only after the first week or two that these changes became marked, although this is the proper place, I think, to speak of them.

For, having myself no other duty than to enjoy a well-earned holiday, I used to load my canoe with blankets and provisions and journey forth on exploration trips among the islands of several days together; and it was on my return from the first of these--when I rediscovered the party, so to speak--that these changes first presented themselves vividly to me, and in one particular instance produced a rather curious impression.

In a word, then, while every one had grown wilder, naturally wilder, Sangree, it seemed to me, had grown much wilder, and what I can only call unnaturally wilder.

He made me think of a savage.

To begin with, he had changed immensely in mere physical appearance, and the full brown cheeks, the brighter eyes of absolute health, and the general air of vigour and robustness that had come to replace his customary lassitude and timidity, had worked such an improvement that I hardly knew him for the same man.

His voice, too, was deeper and his manner bespoke for the first time a greater measure of confidence in himself.

He now had some claims to be called nice-looking, or at least to a certain air of virility that would not lessen his value in the eyes of the opposite sex.

All this, of course, was natural enough, and most welcome.

But, altogether apart from this physical change, which no doubt had also been going forward in the rest of us, there was a subtle note in his personality that came to me with a degree of surprise that almost amounted to shock.

And two things--as he came down to welcome me and pull up the canoe--leaped up in my mind unbidden, as though connected in some way I could not at the moment divine--first, the curious judgment formed of him by Joan; and secondly, that fugitive expression I had caught in his face while Maloney was offering up his strange prayer for special protection from Heaven.

The delicacy of manner and feature--to call it by no milder term--which had always been a distinguishing characteristic of the man, had been replaced by something far more vigorous and decided, that yet utterly eluded analysis.

The change which impressed me so oddly was not easy to name.

The others--singing Maloney, the bustling Bo'sun's Mate, and Joan, that fascinating half-breed of undine and salamander--all showed the effects of a life so close to nature; but in their case the change was perfectly natural and what was to be expected, whereas with Peter Sangree, the Canadian, it was something unusual and unexpected.

It is impossible to explain how he managed gradually to convey to my mind the impression that something in him had turned savage, yet this, more or less, is the impression that he did convey.

It was not that he seemed really less civilised, or that his character had undergone any definite alteration, but rather that something in him, hitherto dormant, had awakened to life.

Some quality, latent till now--so far, at least, as we were concerned, who, after all, knew him but slightly--had stirred into activity and risen to the surface of his being.

And while, for the moment, this seemed as far as I could get, it was but natural that my mind should continue the intuitive process and acknowledge that John Silence, owing to his peculiar faculties, and the girl, owing to her singularly receptive temperament, might each in a different way have divined this latent quality in his soul, and feared its manifestation later.

On looking back to this painful adventure, too, it now seems equally natural that the same process, carried to its logical conclusion, should have wakened some deep instinct in me that, wholly without direction from my will, set itself sharply and persistently upon the watch from that very moment.

Thenceforward the personality of Sangree was never far from my thoughts, and I was for ever analysing and searching for the explanation that took so long in coming.

"I declare, Hubbard, you're tanned like an aboriginal, and you look like one, too," laughed Maloney.

"And I can return the compliment," was my reply, as we all gathered round a brew of tea to exchange news and compare notes.

And later, at supper, it amused me to observe that the distinguished tutor, once clergyman, did not eat his food quite as "nicely" as he did at home--he devoured it; that Mrs. Maloney ate more, and, to say the least, with less delay, than was her custom in the select atmosphere of her English dining-room; and that while Joan attacked her tin plateful with genuine avidity, Sangree, the Canadian, bit and gnawed at his, laughing and talking and complimenting the cook all the while, and making me think with secret amusement of a starved animal at its first meal.

While, from their remarks about myself, I judged that I had changed and grown wild as much as the rest of them.

In this and in a hundred other little ways the change showed, ways difficult to define in detail, but all proving--not the coarsening effect of leading the primitive life, but, let us say, the more direct and unvarnished methods that became prevalent.

For all day long we were in the bath of the elements--wind, water, sun--and just as the body became insensible to cold and shed unnecessary clothing, the mind grew straightforward and shed many of the disguises required by the conventions of civilisation.

And in each, according to temperament and character, there stirred the life-instincts that were natural, untamed, and, in a sense--savage.

III

So it came about that I stayed with our island party, putting off my second exploring trip from day to day, and I think that this far-fetched instinct to watch Sangree was really the cause of my postponement.

For another ten days the life of the Camp pursued its even and delightful way, blessed by perfect summer weather, a good harvest of fish, fine winds for sailing, and calm, starry nights.

Maloney's selfish prayer had been favourably received.

Nothing came to disturb or perplex.

There was not even the prowling of night animals to vex the rest of Mrs. Maloney; for in previous camps it had often been her peculiar affliction that she heard the porcupines scratching against the canvas, or the squirrels dropping fir-cones in the early morning with a sound of miniature thunder upon the roof of her tent.

But on this island there was not even a squirrel or a mouse.

I think two toads and a small and harmless snake were the only living creatures that had been discovered during the whole of the first fortnight.

And these two toads in all probability were not two toads, but one toad.

Then, suddenly, came the terror that changed the whole aspect of the place--the devastating terror.

It came, at first, gently, but from the very start it made me realise the unpleasant loneliness of our situation, our remote isolation in this wilderness of sea and rock, and how the islands in this tideless Baltic ocean lay about us like the advance guard of a vast besieging army.

Its entry, as I say, was gentle, hardly noticeable, in fact, to most of us: singularly undramatic it certainly was.

But, then, in actual life this is often the way the dreadful climaxes move upon us, leaving the heart undisturbed almost to the last minute, and then overwhelming it with a sudden rush of horror.

For it was the custom at breakfast to listen patiently while each in turn related the trivial adventures of the night--how they slept, whether the wind shook their tent, whether the spider on the ridge pole had moved, whether they had heard the toad, and so forth--and on this particular morning Joan, in the middle of a little pause, made a truly novel announcement: "In the night I heard the howling of a dog," she said, and then flushed up to the roots of her hair when we burst out laughing.

For the idea of there being a dog on this forsaken island that was only able to support a snake and two toads was distinctly ludicrous, and I remember Maloney, half-way through his burnt porridge, capping the announcement by declaring that he had heard a "Baltic turtle" in the lagoon, and his wife's expression of frantic alarm before the laughter undeceived her.

But the next morning Joan repeated the story with additional and convincing detail.

"Sounds of whining and growling woke me," she said, "and I distinctly heard sniffing under my tent, and the scratching of paws."

"Oh, Timothy!

Can it be a porcupine?"

exclaimed the Bo'sun's Mate with distress, forgetting that Sweden was not Canada.

But the girl's voice had sounded to me in quite another key, and looking up I saw that her father and Sangree were staring at her hard.

They, too, understood that she was in earnest, and had been struck by the serious note in her voice.

"Rubbish, Joan!

You are always dreaming something or other wild," her father said a little impatiently.

"There's not an animal of any size on the whole island," added Sangree with a puzzled expression.

He never took his eyes from her face.

"But there's nothing to prevent one swimming over," I put in briskly, for somehow a sense of uneasiness that was not pleasant had woven itself into the talk and pauses.

"A deer, for instance, might easily land in the night and take a look round--" "Or a bear!"

gasped the Bo'sun's Mate, with a look so portentous that we all welcomed the laugh.

But Joan did not laugh.

Instead, she sprang up and called to us to follow.

"There," she said, pointing to the ground by her tent on the side farthest from her mother's; "there are the marks close to my head.

You can see for yourselves."

We saw plainly.

The moss and lichen--for earth there was hardly any--had been scratched up by paws.

An animal about the size of a large dog it must have been, to judge by the marks.

We stood and stared in a row.

"Close to my head," repeated the girl, looking round at us.

Her face, I noticed, was very pale, and her lip seemed to quiver for an instant.

Then she gave a sudden gulp--and burst into a flood of tears.

The whole thing had come about in the brief space of a few minutes, and with a curious sense of inevitableness, moreover, as though it had all been carefully planned from all time and nothing could have stopped it.

It had all been rehearsed before--had actually happened before, as the strange feeling sometimes has it; it seemed like the opening movement in some ominous drama, and that I knew exactly what would happen next.

Something of great moment was impending.

For this sinister sensation of coming disaster made itself felt from the very beginning, and an atmosphere of gloom and dismay pervaded the entire Camp from that moment forward.

I drew Sangree to one side and moved away, while Maloney took the distressed girl into her tent, and his wife followed them, energetic and greatly flustered.

For thus, in undramatic fashion, it was that the terror I have spoken of first attempted the invasion of our Camp, and, trivial and unimportant though it seemed, every little detail of this opening scene is photographed upon my mind with merciless accuracy and precision.

It happened exactly as described.

This was exactly the language used.

I see it written before me in black and white.

I see, too, the faces of all concerned with the sudden ugly signature of alarm where before had been peace.

The terror had stretched out, so to speak, a first tentative feeler toward us and had touched the hearts of each with a horrid directness.

And from this moment the Camp changed.

Sangree in particular was visibly upset.

He could not bear to see the girl distressed, and to hear her actually cry was almost more than he could stand.

The feeling that he had no right to protect her hurt him keenly, and I could see that he was itching to do something to help, and liked him for it.

His expression said plainly that he would tear in a thousand pieces anything that dared to injure a hair of her head.

We lit our pipes and strolled over in silence to the men's quarters, and it was his odd Canadian expression "Gee whiz!"

that drew my attention to a further discovery.

"The brute's been scratching round my tent too," he cried, as he pointed to similar marks by the door and I stooped down to examine them.

We both stared in amazement for several minutes without speaking.

"Only I sleep like the dead," he added, straightening up again, "and so heard nothing, I suppose."

We traced the paw-marks from the mouth of his tent in a direct line across to the girl's, but nowhere else about the Camp was there a sign of the strange visitor.

The deer, dog, or whatever it was that had twice favoured us with a visit in the night, had confined its attentions to these two tents.

And, after all, there was really nothing out of the way about these visits of an unknown animal, for although our own island was destitute of life, we were in the heart of a wilderness, and the mainland and larger islands must be swarming with all kinds of four-footed creatures, and no very prolonged swimming was necessary to reach us.

In any other country it would not have caused a moment's interest--interest of the kind we felt, that is.

In our Canadian camps the bears were for ever grunting about among the provision bags at night, porcupines scratching unceasingly, and chipmunks scuttling over everything.

"My daughter is overtired, and that's the truth of it," explained Maloney presently when he rejoined us and had examined in turn the other paw-marks.

"She's been overdoing it lately, and camp-life, you know, always means a great excitement to her.

It's natural enough, if we take no notice she'll be all right."

He paused to borrow my tobacco pouch and fill his pipe, and the blundering way he filled it and spilled the precious weed on the ground visibly belied the calm of his easy language.

"You might take her out for a bit of fishing, Hubbard, like a good chap; she's hardly up to the long day in the cutter.

Show her some of the other islands in your canoe, perhaps.

Eh?"

And by lunch-time the cloud had passed away as suddenly, and as suspiciously, as it had come.

But in the canoe, on our way home, having till then purposely ignored the subject uppermost in our minds, she suddenly spoke to me in a way that again touched the note of sinister alarm--the note that kept on sounding and sounding until finally John Silence came with his great vibrating presence and relieved it; yes, and even after he came, too, for a while.

"I'm ashamed to ask it," she said abruptly, as she steered me home, her sleeves rolled up, her hair blowing in the wind, "and ashamed of my silly tears too, because I really can't make out what caused them; but, Mr. Hubbard, I want you to promise me not to go off for your long expeditions--just yet.

I beg it of you."

She was so in earnest that she forgot the canoe, and the wind caught it sideways and made us roll dangerously.

"I have tried hard not to ask this," she added, bringing the canoe round again, "but I simply can't help myself."

It was a good deal to ask, and I suppose my hesitation was plain; for she went on before I could reply, and her beseeching expression and intensity of manner impressed me very forcibly.

"For another two weeks only--" "Mr. Sangree leaves in a fortnight," I said, seeing at once what she was driving at, but wondering if it was best to encourage her or not.

"If I knew you were to be on the island till then," she said, her face alternately pale and blushing, and her voice trembling a little, "I should feel so much happier."

I looked at her steadily, waiting for her to finish.

"And safer," she added almost in a whisper; "especially--at night, I mean."

"Safer, Joan?"

I repeated, thinking I had never seen her eyes so soft and tender.

She nodded her head, keeping her gaze fixed on my face.

It was really difficult to refuse, whatever my thoughts and judgment may have been, and somehow I understood that she spoke with good reason, though for the life of me I could not have put it into words.

"Happier--and safer," she said gravely, the canoe giving a dangerous lurch as she leaned forward in her seat to catch my answer.

Perhaps, after all, the wisest way was to grant her request and make light of it, easing her anxiety without too much encouraging its cause.

"All right, Joan, you queer creature; I promise," and the instant look of relief in her face, and the smile that came back like sunlight to her eyes, made me feel that, unknown to myself and the world, I was capable of considerable sacrifice after all.

"But, you know, there's nothing to be afraid of," I added sharply; and she looked up in my face with the smile women use when they know we are talking idly, yet do not wish to tell us so.

"_You_ don't feel afraid, I know," she observed quietly.

"Of course not; why should I?"

"So, if you will just humour me this once I--I will never ask anything foolish of you again as long as I live," she said gratefully.

"You have my promise," was all I could find to say.

She headed the nose of the canoe for the lagoon lying a quarter of a mile ahead, and paddled swiftly; but a minute or two later she paused again and stared hard at me with the dripping paddle across the thwarts.

"You've not heard anything at night yourself, have you?"

she asked.

"I never hear anything at night," I replied shortly, "from the moment I lie down till the moment I get up."

"That dismal howling, for instance," she went on, determined to get it out, "far away at first and then getting closer, and stopping just outside the Camp?"

"Certainly not."

"Because, sometimes I think I almost dreamed it."

"Most likely you did," was my unsympathetic response.

"And you don't think father has heard it either, then?"

"No. He would have told me if he had."

This seemed to relieve her mind a little.

"I know mother hasn't," she added, as if speaking to herself, "for she hears nothing--ever."

* * * * * It was two nights after this conversation that I woke out of deep sleep and heard sounds of screaming.

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.

"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.