The captain stopped near a rustic summer-house falling into decay, and half buried amidst the tangled foliage that clustered about the mouldering thatch and the dilapidated woodwork.
"It was hereabout the shot was fired," muttered the captain; "about a hundred yards due nor'ard of the stile. I could take my oath as it weren't far from this spot I'm standin' on."
He looked about him in the dim light. He could see no one; but an army might have hidden amongst the trees that encircled the open patch of turf on which the summer-house had been built. He listened; with his hat off, and his big hand pressed tightly on his heart, as if to still its tumultuous beating. He listened, as eagerly as he had often listened, far out on a glassy sea, for the first faint breath of a rising wind; but he could hear nothing except the occasional croaking of the frogs in the pond near the summer-house.
"I could have sworn it was about here the shot was fired," he repeated. "God grant as it was poachers, after all! but it's given me a turn that's made me feel like some cockney lubber aboard a steamer betwixt Bristol and Cork. Lord, what a blessed old fool I am!" muttered the captain, after walking slowly round the summer-house to convince himself that there was no one hidden in it. "One 'ud think I'd never heerd the sound of a ha'p'orth of powder before to-night."
He put on his hat, and walked a few paces forward, still looking about cautiously, and still listening; but much easier in his mind than when first he had re-entered the wood.
He stopped suddenly, arrested by a sound which has of itself, without any reference to its power of association, a mysterious and chilling influence upon the human heart. This sound was the howling of a dog,—the prolonged, monotonous howling of a dog. A cold sweat broke out upon the sailor's forehead. That sound, always one of terror to his superstitious nature, was doubly terrible to-night.
"It means death!" he muttered, with a groan. "No dog ever howled like that except for death."
He turned back, and looked about him. The moonlight glimmered faintly upon the broad patch of stagnant water near the summer-house, and upon its brink the captain saw two figures, black against the summer atmosphere: a prostrate figure, lying close to the edge of the water; and a large dog, with his head uplifted to the sky, howling piteously.
It was the bounden duty of poor John Mellish, in his capacity of host, to sit at the head of his table, pass the claret-jug, and listen to Colonel Maddison's stories of the pig-sticking and the tiger-hunting, as long as the Indian officer chose to talk for the amusement of his friend and his son-in-law. It was perhaps lucky that patient Mr. Lofthouse was well up in all the stories, and knew exactly which departments of each narrative were to be laughed at, and which were to be listened to with silent and awe-stricken attention; for John Mellish made a very bad audience upon this occasion. He pushed the filberts towards the colonel at the very moment when "the tigress was crouching for a spring, upon the rising ground exactly above us, sir, and when, by Jove! Charley Maddison felt himself at pretty close quarters with the enemy, sir, and never thought to stretch his legs under this mahogany, or any other man's, sir;" and he spoiled the officer's best joke by asking him for the claret in the middle of it.