“Vait!” he screeched. “Vait! Vait!”
He was in his white nightshirt, and his head and feet were bare. With the gun in his right hand and the heavy ammunition case tucked under his left arm, he was as comical a figure as moonlight ever revealed, as he wallowed and panted after his comrades.
“This way!” shouted Diamond, hearing their movements.
The big cats began to grow uneasy, for they, too, heard that rush of footsteps across the island, though the sound was still some distance away. One of them got up and walked to the foot of the ledge, as if it had half a notion to climb up and try conclusions with Diamond at close quarters. But it merely stretched up to its full height against the rock and drew its claws rasping down the face of the rock as if to sharpen them.
“Not a pleasant sound,” was Diamond’s grim thought.
The loup-cervier retreated, after having gone through this suggestive performance, and again sat bolt upright beside its mate and stared at the prisoner with shiny bright eyes.
But they became more and more uneasy, as the sounds of hurrying feet came nearer and nearer, and at last rose from their sitting posture.
Once more Diamond funneled his hands.
“Don’t come too fast,” he cautioned. “There are some wildcats here that I want you to shoot. You’ll scare them away.”
“All that scare for that!” laughed Merriwell, dropping into a walk. “I thought he was in some deadly peril.”