"Wha—what?" he gasped.
Something darkened the doorway. What he now saw was a strange, grotesque shape that looked like a shadow itself in the uncertain light of the early morning.
"Get out of here!" bellowed the pilot, the cold chills running up and down his spine.
The most frightful sound that his ears had ever heard, broke suddenly on the quiet of the Mississippi night.
"It's the lion escaped!"
Cummings grabbed a stout oak stick that lay at hand—the stick that now and then, when battling with a stiff current, he used to insert between the spokes of the steering wheel to give him greater leverage.
With a yell he brought the stick down on the head of the strange beast. The roar or bray of the animal stopped suddenly.
Whack! came the echo from the club.
Cummings sprang back. He slammed the pilot-house door in the face of the beast, and closed the windows with a bang that shook the pilot house. In his excitement the pilot rang in a signal to the engineer for full speed astern.
About that time something else occurred.