Her; tongue cleaved to her mouth--she could feel that the roof of the latter was becoming dry--she tried to scream--and failed!
And, still, close to the earth, that thing crept--nearer--nearer--and once, as it either pushed some underbrush aside or came more into view, a ray of the moon glistened on a pair of eyes, illuminating the pupils for a moment. Then she found her voice and shrieked aloud:
'Mr. Charke! Mr. Charke! There is something creeping towards us. Save us! Save us!'
In a moment he was endeavouring to spring to his feet, but this he could not do owing to his soreness and contusions; yet, nevertheless, he staggered up a moment later and gazed around, wishing that he had some weapon to his hand.
That cry of Bella's--it rang along the desolate beach as, may be, no woman's voice had ever rung there before!--brought matters to a crisis. There was a rush, a spring from the creature that had, by now, crawled so near to them; a spring which hurled Charke back reeling as the thing passed him and then brought it, itself, close to Bella, about and around whom it at once began to gambol, rudely and roughly, as some great watch-dog might do who had found its lost mistress.
The creature was Bengalee, the tiger-cub, and, in some way, it, if nothing else, was saved from the wreck of the Emperor of the Moon.
'Oh!' cried Bella, half fearfully at its furious bounds and leaps, which, even in her nervousness, she could not but construe into a wild, savage joy on its part at once more being in her presence, 'it is Bengalee. Oh, thank God!'
'Thank God?' Charke repeated, not understanding. 'Thank God for what?'
'It is a sign,' she said, 'a sign that we are not the only ones who have escaped. Think! think! If this creature could get ashore, so--so may others have done.'
For a moment he said nothing, contenting himself with watching the exultation of the creature and in reflecting that it was her shriek which had told it who those were to whom it had drawn so near--with, perhaps, if stung by hunger and privation, a vastly different intention from that of fondling either of them! And he did think of what she hinted in connection with its safety and its having reached the island alive, as well as of that safety pointing to the fact that others, that human beings, might also have done so. Only--he knew, and knowing, refrained from saying, that her deduction was by no means accurate. This animal had been on the deck when the ship heeled over on the reef; it was confined only in a locker from which it might easily have forced its way out in its terror, or, indeed, might have fallen out of it, but it was an animal, and its blindness had left it! Gilbert Bampfyld had also been on the deck, Charke remembered, but was still blind. There was no analogy between the tiger-cub and any human soul on board.