“It was after one of his frantic attempts to catch Dixie that he sought to force the issue. He turned suddenly and strode to where Claud was lying on the sand, and at the sight of his face the lad struggled to his feet—while I sat and waited, for something seemed to tell me that the time had come, and I felt no fear of the result.
“‘Call your dog, you putty-face!’ snarled Deshay. ‘Call your dog!’—he thrust out his matted jaw; ‘call him up where I can get my hands on him!’ said he. He had put away his knife and gripped the stretcher. ‘Call him up, d’ye hear, or I’ll spatter your fool brains all over the shop!’
“It was here that he struck the steel beneath the fresco. Claud looked him over, carefully, coolly, and, although their faces were almost in contact, from such an infinite distance—and then he spoke, in a voice which matched his look, and at the chill of it Deshay drew back.
“Claud half turned and pointed to the cluster of palms. ‘Go over there,’ said he, very quietly, ‘and see if you cannot die a little more decently than you have lived.’ Words fail to express the icy dignity of his tone. ‘It is the only thing left for you,’ he continued, and leaned slightly toward Deshay, looking intently into his face, and at something in the look Deshay drew back with a shiver. ‘There is death in your eyes,’ said Claud; ‘I think that you are going to die this very day’—and then the bolt fell.
“Deshay, terrified, panic-struck at some quality of the cold voice and the words and the chill light of the eyes, staggered and threw up one arm as if to ward a blow. There was no suspicion of a threat in the gesture—no intent—but Dixie, crouching at his master’s side, read it differently. Before Deshay’s arm began to descend the hound had sprung. There was the shock of contact, gurgling noises, convulsive forms heaving upon the sand, the guttering sounds of—of—the abattoir! I saw the snout of the hound twisted sideways, the nose pushed comically upwards, the full mouth in a grotesque grin. Ah, what is more terrible, Doctor, than to see something in human guise worried and throttled by something in the guise of a brute beast?”
Leyden walked to the rail, drummed upon it with his fingers and spat several times into the sea. One guessed that he felt with the hound.
“Dixie sprang back,” he continued, his face still from me; “he sprang back and stood panting, salivating—as a dog does when for the first and only time in his life he commits the error of picking up a toad. Dixie was a starving animal—you understand, Doctor—and his mouth was full of blood, but he did not want that blood—that human blood—nor did he want a human life, to save his own. He backed away, then leaned far forward—as far as he could without stepping nearer, and his delicate nostrils twitched at his work—where his hold had been.
“Soon he turned and walked slowly down to the water, waded out and swam seaward, until all that I could see was the brown speck of his head just entering the outer line of surf; and then he disappeared, and it seemed to me that there were other specks about in the water; but I did not see much of anything for a while. I heard Claud laughing as if to kill himself, and apparently he did, for the natives who found me said that he was dead and one of the sailors was dead. The other sailor, Lentz and myself hung on—the sailor because he took advantage of what Dixie would not do; Lentz, because his pulse was slow, like a tortoise, and, like a camel, he was able to live for a while on his reserve adipose; and I, because the fever had banked my fires so low that no food was required. Besides, I am tough, and—will you please tell me, Doctor, what in the devil ever possessed me to tell such a villainous story? That cat? Ach!—yes—p’st!—scat, you beast!”
I walked over and put a “sheep-shank” in the lanyard on the cage of the tulu-pial bird, and then the cat was unable to reach it.