The man was mad.... I called to him again.
"For Heaven's sake, come away!"
But Angus Jones smiled out over the blue bay.
"As if St. Patrick were to welcome a sea serpent in the dales of Wexford!" he added, raising his oar.
And there crawled out of the wash at his feet a full-grown male lion, gaunt and sopping, with crimson jaws distended....
From afar among the fishing boats I thought many things very swiftly: that I must close my eyes tight against the cruel, bright Madeira sun and what it would show—this for one; that I should never again feed crude Malaga to a man with an empty stomach—for another; that perhaps the animal might be somewhat assuaged with the sea water, and finally that here, after all, was a miracle, as he had said.
For quite surely I saw Angus Jones fetch the jungle monarch but the one wallop with his oar.
"Down!" thundered Angus Jones.
The lion snarled, spat, crouched—and began to shake its paws in the air and to lick its fur like any prowler of the back fence, all forlorn and bedraggled.
"Kitty, kitty!" said Angus Jones....