Total darkness—for in his rush Travis threw aside his lantern—and it seemed an age to Helen as she heard the terrible fight for life going on at her feet, the struggles and howls of the dog, the snapping of the huge teeth, the stinging sand thrown up into her face. Then after a while all was still, and then very quietly from Travis:
“A match, Clay—light the lantern! I have choked him to death.”
Under the light he arose, his clothes torn with tooth and fang of the gaunt dog, which lay silent. He stood up hot and flushed, and then turned pallid, and for a moment staggered as he saw the blood trickling from his left arm.
Helen stood by him terror-eyed, trembling, crushed,—with a terrible sickening fear.
“He was mad,” said Travis gently, “and I fear he has bitten me, though I managed to jump on him before he bit you two.”
He took off his coat—blood was on his shirt sleeve and had run down his arm. Helen, pale and with a great sob in her throat, rolled up the sleeve, Travis submitting, with a strange pallor in his face and the new light in his eyes.
His bare arm came up strong and white. Above the elbow, near the shoulder, the blood still flowed where the fangs had sunk.
“There is only one chance to save me,” he said quietly, “and that, a slim one. It bleeds—if I could only get my lips to it—”
He tried to expostulate, to push her off, as he felt her lips against his naked arm. But she clung there sucking out the virus. He felt her tears fall on his arm. He heard her murmur:
“My dying lion—my dying lion!”