I sit up in bed, and feel for the matches.
But before I can strike one I hear again that extraordinary and very horrible sound.
I lie quite still.
And now a strange thing has happened.
In a flash my thoughts have gone back over years and years and years, and it is twenty-eight years ago and I have crossed thousands and thousands of "loping leagues of sea," and am in Australia, in the burning heat of mid-summer. I am a schoolgirl spending my Christmas holidays in the Australian bush. It is night. I am a nervous little highly-strung creature. A noise wakes me. I shriek and wake the household. When they come dashing in I sob out pitifully.
"There's a wolf outside the window, I heard it howling!"
"It's only a dingo, darling!" says a woman's tender voice, consolingly. "It's only a native dog trying to find water! It can't get in here anyway."
I remember too, that I was on the ground floor then, and I am on the ground floor now, and I find myself wishing I could hear that comforting voice again, telling me this is only a dingo, this horrible howling thing outside there in the night.
I creep out of bed, and tiptoe to the window.
Quite plainly in the silvery moonlight I see, standing in the wide open space in front of this little Flemish Inn, a thin gaunt animal with its tongue lolling out. I see the froth on the tongue, and the yellow-white of its fangs glistening in the winter moonlight. I ask myself what is it? And I ask too why should I feel so frightened? For I am frightened. From behind the white muslin curtains I gaze at that apparition, absolutely petrified.