Sitting on the rock in his wet clothes was anything but comfortable, but under the circumstances Rex felt very well satisfied with the situation.
“I’d a whole lot rather be wet than clawed into ribbons,” he told himself.
Soon the pair of eyes were joined by the second pair, and the two big cats whined as if they realized that they had, for the time being at least, lost the game.
The weather had turned slightly colder during the night and Rex shivered as he crouched on his perch.
“Pretty pussy,” he called. “Sorry to disappoint you, but safety first, you know.”
While he felt that he was safe for the time at least, his position was anything but comfortable. The rock was barely large enough for him to sit on and he did not dare leave it. In his wet clothes his teeth chattered with the cold, although it was not what he would have called a cold night under ordinary circumstances. Water must have gotten into his watch when he went under, for it had stopped, and he had no way of telling the time.
“Not that it would have made much difference,” he told himself as he held the watch to his ear. “Every match that I’ve got is as wet as I am.”
From time to time, first one of the cats and then the other would shatter the silence with its agonizing yell.
Rex wondered with a great deal of anxiety if they would go away with the coming of daylight. He had heard that the wild cat did most of its hunting during the night, but, as he told himself, he was not at all certain that they kept union hours.
“It seems to me that with all the rabbits and other small animals running around here you fellows ought to be able to keep from starving without serving me up. Guess you don’t know how tough I am,” he told the cats, and was answered by an angry snarl.