“I can’t be sure, because it is too dark to see spots.”
“Well, was it a human, sir?”
“I don’t think so, because it was going on all fours.”
“Oh, well, sir, the niggers are clever enough in that way. Both Mak and the little chap can run along like dogs and jump over a tree trunk or a big stone. It is wonderful what strength some of these half savage chaps have in their arms. Being a sailor and doing a great deal going up aloft has made me pretty clever hanging by one’s hands or holding on by one’s eyelids, as we say, at sea, while we furl a sail; but I am nowhere alongside of our Mak.”
“But you as good as said you had an idea, Dan.”
“Well, I have, sir, and I got it only the other day when I was down yonder right away towards the end of the ruins, seeing how far I could go without getting lost. I’d quite forgot all about it till you began to talk. I caught sight of something—just a peep of it as it looked up at me and then ran in amongst the rocks and bushes. I hadn’t got a gun with me, and perhaps I had no business to be loafing about.”
“Oh, never mind that,” said Mark. “What was it you saw?”
“Well, it was something like a good big dog, but I had no chance of seeing it well; and I was just going to turn back when there it was again, or another like it, squatting on a stone at the end of one of them big walls; and when it saw I was watching, it was out of sight directly.”
“Well, that doesn’t help us much,” said Mark impatiently.
“Don’t it, sir? I thought it did, for it seems to me that it was what you saw to-night.”