“She is chased!” I said to myself. “Some prowler of this terrible night is after her!”

 

To follow would have added to her fright: I stepped into her track to stop her pursuer.

 

As I stood for a moment looking after her through the dusk, behind me came a swift, soft-footed rush, and ere I could turn, something sprang over my head, struck me sharply on the forehead, and knocked me down. I was up in an instant, but all I saw of my assailant was a vanishing whiteness. I ran after the beast, with the blood trickling² from my forehead; but had run only a few steps, when a shriek³ of despair tore the quivering night. I ran the faster, though I could not but fear it must already be too late.

 

In a minute or two I spied a low white shape approaching me through the vapour-dusted moonlight. It must be another beast, I thought at first, for it came slowly, almost crawling, with strange, floundering leaps, as of a creature in agony! I drew aside from its path, and waited. As it neared me, I saw it was going on three legs, carrying its left fore-paw high from the ground. It had many dark, oval spots on a shining white skin, and was attended by a low rushing sound, as of water falling upon grass. As it went by me, I saw something streaming from the lifted paw.

 

“It is blood!” I said to myself, “some readier champion than I has wounded the beast!” But, strange to tell, such a pity seized me at sight of the suffering creature, that, though an axe⁴ had been in my hand I could not have struck at it. In a broken succession of hobbling leaps it went out of sight, its blood, as it seemed, still issuing in a small torrent⁵, which kept flowing back softly through the grass beside me. “If it go on bleeding like that,” I thought, “it will soon be hurtless!”

 

分享到：