A dog! Of course, that solved the mystery. But even then the jump from supernatural fears to the material hardly seemed to mend matters. A dog meant a keeper, of course, unless it were a midnight poacher like themselves, in which event it would give them a wide berth; but this was too much to hope. On the other hand, if it were accompanying a keeper on his midnight round, the brute would certainly attack them; and that it was a large and heavy animal they could determine by the sound of its quick, fierce rushes to and fro, and a sort of deep-toned grunt which it uttered now and then as it snuffed the ground.
Breathlessly they crouched. Ha! It was coming! The sound of its approaching rush in the pitchy blackness was almost upon them—then it passed. It had not discovered them yet, but evidently suspected their presence. When it winded them, as it might do any moment, then it would come straight for them. There was something terribly unnerving in this feeling of being hunted, and that by an enemy whose strength they had no opportunity of estimating.
As the retreating sound grew fainter, Haviland suggested climbing a tree. There was no such thing as playing the ghost again. That was all very well with a keeper, but it wouldn’t do for a moment with a dog. Besides, the brute could maul them horribly even before the keeper should arrive on the scene; but Anthony negatived the suggestion.
“No climb tree,” he said. “I kill him. Look, he come again.”
It was even as he had said. The rush of a heavy body through the undergrowth, this time on the other side of the ride, and then, from the darkness beyond, there sprang forth into the moonlit ride an enormous bull-mastiff.
Terrible to a degree looked the formidable brute, his fangs exposed in a white line across the blackness of his huge bullet head: and the great muscular brindled body looked powerful enough to bring down a bullock with ease. Why, these two would simply be torn to pieces.
As the brute sprang into the light it paused a moment. Then, uttering one deep, cavernous “gowl” it came straight for them.
But at the moment it began its rush, there darted forth into the light a form, lithe and dark. Something flashed aloft, and at the same time descended—and then animal and human were mixed up together in a struggling mass upon the ground. The descendant of a long line of warriors knew better than to give his antagonist the choice of battle ground, and did not prefer to fight in the dark, wherefore he had hurled himself straight at the onrushing monster—stabbing furiously with his improvised sheep-shear assegai.
Not ineffectually either, but the sheer weight of the heavy muscular brute had hurled him flat.
It had all been done with a rapidity that was almost lightning-like. Haviland, witnessing it, felt all in a maze for a moment, realising that he was unarmed—for the air-gun of course would be about as effective against such an adversary as this as the common or school pea-shooter. Yet he bethought him of a weapon more useful still, and without hesitation he advanced upon the struggling pair, and his right fist was armed with a knuckle-duster of the most formidable kind, each knuckle constituting a sharp point—a terrible implement, one moderately strong blow of which could kill a man easily.