Suddenly, with a fierce snarl, an animal of some sort flew at her. She had a momentary vision of a pair of blazing eyes, bared teeth, and extended claws. She screamed and turned her head. In that instant a wildcat landed on her back and a vicious claw reached for her face. But Martin was at her side. Without a second’s hesitation he seized the growling brute in both hands and tore it from off her shoulders. His right hand was around its neck, but he strove in vain to grasp the small of its back in the left. It wriggled and scratched with the ferocity of an undersized tiger. Martin’s coat sleeves and shirt were slashed to shreds, his waistcoat was rent, and deep gashes were cut in his arms, but he held on gamely.
Mr. Herbert and the others ran up, but came unarmed. They had not even a stick. The vicar, with some presence of mind, rushed back and wrenched a leg from the camp table, but by the time he returned the cat was moving its limbs in its final spasms, for Martin had choked it to death.
The vicar danced about with his improvised weapon, imploring the boy to “throw it down and let me whack the life out of it,” but Martin was enraged with the pain and the damage to his clothing. In his anger he felt that he could wrench the wretched beast limb from limb, and he might have endeavored to do that very thing were it not for the presence of Elsie Herbert. As it was, when the cat fell to the ground its struggles had ended, but Mr. Herbert gave it a couple of hearty blows to make sure.
It was a tremendous brute, double the size of its domestic progenitors. At one period in its career it had been caught in a rabbit trap, for one of its forelegs was removed at the joint, and the calloused stump was hard as a bit of stone.
A chorus of praise for Martin’s promptitude and courage was cut short when he took the table leg and went back to the clump of gorse.
“I thought it was curious that there were no rabbits here,” he said. “Now I know why. This cat has a litter of kittens hidden among the whins.”
“Are you gug-gug-going to kuk-kuk-kill them?” sobbed Elsie.
He paused in his murderous search.
“It makes no matter now,” he said, laughing. “I’ll tell the keeper. Wildcats eat up an awful lot of game.”
His coolness, his absolute disregard of the really serious cuts he had received, were astounding to the town-bred men. The vicar was the first to recover some degree of composure.