But before Hal’s gun could belch forth its one shot, the great beast had leaped. Hal’s hand flung up to new aim. In the ghastly white torchlight, a roaring tornado of teeth and claws rose above him.
The pistol shot its load straight up. And that instant, the boy flung himself backwards out of the window. Instead of landing in a waiting boat, he plunged into the cold, yellow depths of flood water.
He came up sputtering and choking. But after the first shock of his submersion, he felt no alarm. He was a strong swimmer and could keep afloat for hours if necessary. He bumped into what he thought was a drifting log, but it turned out to be a derelict canoe upside down. He clung to that and shouted. His electric torch and revolver had been lost as he leaped from the window, almost under the impact of the panther’s downward slashing claws.
Hal’s lusty shouting soon produced results. The rescue launch which had drifted down stream, put about and with its headlight spraying the water surface with its searching glare, nosed cautiously back up alongside of him and his float. Strong hands hauled him aboard and a warm blanket was flung around him.
Colonel Wiljohn was storming up and down the little craft in a rage at his crew for deserting Hal in his time of peril.
The fellow at the steering wheel was rather shamefaced over letting a gunshot and panther caterwauls shake his hand so that the boat shot from his control and into midstream.
“D-don’t blame you,” chattered Hal, drawing the blanket tighter about his dripping person, “if it s-s-sounded half as awful to you all outside as it did to me inside—it was t-t-time to be leaving!”
To make sure that the great panther was not left merely wounded to suffer lingeringly, or perhaps to injure someone else who might enter the place, the boat was drawn again within sight-range of the drifting old house. Lights were played over the upper story room, now so nearly submerged.
The long tawny form lay stretched on the floor, without sign of movement. Hal’s one shot had done its work.
Hope died hard in Colonel Wiljohn’s breast. His mind told him that the shrill “woman screams” that had lured Hal to this place could only have been the panther’s call—so like a woman crying in distress. To satisfy himself, however, the Colonel searched every possible part of the floating, careening old house. With an axe he forced an entrance through the warped, swollen doors to the three upper rooms, searched closets and cupboards. He found no woman and child hiding away from that other passenger,—the great, tawny panther cat. A pitiful litter of clothes, books, a few small toys, deserted when the home-dwellers had to flee for their lives, was the only reward for his search.