Lastly they went to the thicket of “wait-a-bit” blackthorn. Pan did go in, and that was as much, he soon came out, he did not like the blackthorn. But by throwing stones and fragments of dead branches up in the air so that they should descend into the midst of the thicket they satisfied themselves that there was nothing in it. It was necessary to cast the stones and sticks up into the air because they would not penetrate if thrown horizontally.
The circuit of the island was completed, and they now crept up quietly to the verge of the cliff behind the spiked stakes. The stockade was exactly as they had left it; Pan looked over the edge of the cliff into it, and did not even sniff. They went down and rested a few minutes.
There never was greater temerity than this searching the island for the tiger. Neither the bullet nor their arrows would have stayed the advance of that terrible beast for a moment. Inside their stockade and cage they might withstand him; in the open he would have swept them down just as a lady’s sleeve might sweep down the chessmen on the board. Thus in his native haunts he overthrows a crowd of spear-armed savages.
“He can’t be on the island,” said Mark.
“It’s curious we did not see any sign,” said Bevis. “There are no marks or footprints anywhere.”
“If there was some clay now—wet clay,” said Mark, “but it’s all sandy; his claws would show in clay like Pan’s.”
“Like a crab.” Pan’s footprint in moist clay was somewhat crab-shaped.
“Is there no place where he would leave a mark?”
“Just at the edge of the water the moorhens leave footprints.”
“That would be the place, only we can’t look very close to the edge everywhere.”