Finn the wolfhound

by A. J. Dawson

But the man had taken only three steps, and when he sank down to the earth again it was not in the place he had occupied before. He lay down where he had stood when he threw the billet of wood, and there was that in the manner of his lying down which boded ill for his future activity. It was observed most carefully by three of the crows, who had followed him all day; and upon the strength of it, they settled within a dozen paces of his recumbent figure, with an air which seemed to say plainly that they could afford a little more patience now, since they would not have long to wait.

They settled within a dozen paces of his recumbent figure.

When full daylight came, Warrigal and her mates were closer in than ever; hidden in the scrub within forty paces of the man. Finn retained his old place, some five-and-thirty yards farther back, behind a bush. The crows preened their funereal plumage and waited, full of bright-eyed expectancy. Finn gnawed bitterly at his dry fragment of scrub root. The splendid pitiless sun climbed slowly clear of its bed on the horizon, thrusting up long, keen blades of heat and light to herald the coming of another blazing day in the long drought.

Presently, a long spear of the new day's light thrust its point between the man's curved arm and his face. He turned on his side so that he faced the sun, and evidently its message to him was that he must be up and doing; that he must proceed with his journey. Slowly, and with painful effort, he rose as far as his knees; and then, with a groan, drooped down to earth again on his side. The crows cocked their heads sideways at him. They seemed full of brightness and life. But the sun himself was not more pitiless than the question they seemed to be putting to the man, as they perked their heads from side to side while considering his last move. Warrigal and her mates saw clearly the conclusion the crows had arrived at. They, also, held that the man was down for good at last. At length, it seemed to them, he was practically nothing else than food; the man-mastery, whose emblem is man's erectness, or power to stand erect, was gone for ever, they thought. The crows were safe guides, and one of them was hopping gravely towards the back of the man. Warrigal, followed by five of her mates, crept slowly forward through the scrub; and saliva was hanging like icicles from their parted jaws.

Finn saw Warrigal's movement, and knew precisely what it portended with as much certainty as though his mate had explained it all to him. And now Finn was possessed by two opposing inclinations, both terribly strong. Upon the one hand, instinctive respect for man's authority and acquired dislike of man and all his works bade the great Wolfhound remain where he was. Upon the other hand, two forces impelled him to rise and join his mate, and those two forces were the greatest hunger he had ever known, and the assertive pride of his leadership of the pack. There before his eyes his section of the pack was advancing, preparing for a kill for food, there in that bitter desert of starvation. And he, the unquestioned master and leader of the pack, master of all the wild kindred that he knew; he, Finn, was----Three seconds later, and the Wolfhound had bounded forward, his great shoulders thrusting angrily between Warrigal and the big male dingo who had dared to usurp his, Finn's, place there as leader in concerted action.

For an instant the pack paused, no more than a score of paces distant from the man's shoulders, glaring uneasily. Then the man moved, raising his body slightly upon one elbow. The dingoes drew back a pace, even Warrigal moving back with them, though she snarled savagely in doing so. Finn did not move. Warrigal's snarl it was which told the man of his danger, and, with an effort, he rose upon his knees, and grabbed at his long stick where it lay on the ground. Again Warrigal snarled, less than a yard from Finn's ears, and her snarl was the snarl which announces a kill. It was not for others to kill where Finn led. And yet something--he could not tell what, since he knew nothing of heredity--something held the great Wolfhound's muscles relaxed; he could not take the leap which was wont to precede killing with him. Again Warrigal snarled. The man was rising to his feet. A great fear of being shamed was upon Finn. With that snarl in his ears advance was a necessity. He moved forward quickly, but without a spring. And in that instant the man, having actually got upon his feet, swung round toward the pack with his long stick uplifted, and Finn gathered his hind-quarters under him for the leap which should end this hunting--this long, strange hunting in a desert of starvation.

The Wolfhound actually did spring. His four feet left the ground. But, with a shock which jarred every nerve and muscle in his great frame, they returned to earth again, practically upon the exact spots they had left. His sense of smell, never remarkable for its acuteness in detail, had told Finn nothing, save that his quarry in this strange hunting was man. But the Wolfhound's eyes could not mislead him, and in the instant of his suddenly arrested spring--the spring which it had taken every particle of strength in his great body to check--he had known, with a sudden revulsion of feeling which positively stopped the beating of his heart, that this man the pack had trailed was none other than the Man of all the world for him; the man whose person was as sacred as his will to Finn; the Master, whose loss had been the beginning and the cause of all the troubles the Wolfhound had ever known.

There had been the beginning of the killing snarl in Finn's throat when he sprang, and as he came to earth again at the man's feet, possessed and almost paralysed by his amazing discovery, that snarl had ended in as curious a cry as ever left the throat of four-footed folk since the world began. It was not a bark this cry, still less a snarl or growl, and it could not have been called a howl. It was more like human speech than that of the wild people; and, human or animal, there was no mistaking it for anything less than soul-speech. It welled up into the morning air from the very centre of that in Finn which must be called his soul--the something which differentiated him from every other living thing on earth, and made him--Finn.