“Why, the sarpint—it might have been a sea-sarpint, for nobody seemed to believe in it.”
“Yes,” I said moodily, “an enormous beast.”
“And he got it pretty hot from the tiger thing?”
“You saw the blood about, and now hold your tongue.”
“But I ain’t done yet, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom eagerly. “That there Don wouldn’t believe in it, and we knowed that it went into that brake. What do you say to going up to the house, getting the guns, and then shooting the beast and skinning him; so as to show them that English lads don’t go bouncing and swelling about without they’ve got something to bounce and swell about?”
There was something in Tom’s project that interested me, and I turned to him with eagerness. Adventure—something to prove that I had been no boaster, something to divert the current of my thoughts; it was the very thing, but I said gloomily the next minute:
“We should be too late, Tom; the beast must have taken to the river.”
“All wounded beasts make to the water, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom; “but we don’t know that we should be too late. What I say is—Let’s try.”
“Come along then,” I cried.
We walked up to the hacienda, encountering Garcia on the portal, ready to bestow upon us both a sneering grin as we again issued forth, each carrying a double gun loaded with buck-shot.