The warning came late. George was already on the bank of the pool, and only a few yards from the hemlock. The lynx saw him, and finding another enemy in her rear, she turned as if to attack him.
George had only the briefest instant in which to grasp the situation and act. He turned and sprang into the pool, and plunged to its centre; there he could barely touch bottom.
The animal did not follow; like all the cat tribe, a lynx dislikes and fears the water, and this one was daunted at the prospect of a fight in the hated element. She circled about the pool, looking for some way of reaching him without getting a wetting. Baffled on every side, she then crouched at the water's edge and screamed with rage. A whine from the hemlock made her remember the kitten. She turned and dashed up the tree; there was now no hesitation; she was enraged, and meant to revenge herself.
Her onslaught was so sudden that Arthur had no time for any preparation. In his panic and hasty excited effort to settle himself so that he could strike to advantage, the club slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground. He cried out, and George saw what had happened. When the lynx reached him, Arthur used his feet so vigorously against her head that for a moment or two she was checked. He was screaming in a frenzy of terror.
"Help me, George!" he cried. "Help! help! help!"
It seemed almost like inviting certain death to attack the enraged animal when armed with no better weapon than his gumming-pole; but George could not resist his friend's agonized appeal for help. He rushed ashore and to the foot of the hemlock. From there he could just reach the animal's flank—she having recoiled a little before Arthur's desperate kicking—and he began to belabor it with the can on the end of his pole. The lynx partially turned, seeming to hesitate whether to charge the enemy above or to fling herself upon this new assailant.
While this noise and commotion was going on, the kitten had got more and more frightened. Trying to seek safety in flight, it had crawled along the big branch until it reached almost the extreme end; the branch snapped under its weight, and with a long cry it fell through the air. Fortunately for it, it had crawled so far along the branch that when it fell, instead of striking the earth, it came down in the midst of the pool.
It fell just as its mother was hesitating which one of the boys to attack. She saw it strike the water, and forgetting all else in this new peril to her offspring, she leaped over George's head and plunged into the water to its rescue—showing that even in a lynx the mother's love or instinct is stronger than rage or the passion for revenge.
Holding the kitten in her teeth, she got out of the water as soon as possible. On the bank she paused for a moment, as if in doubt whether to attack George or not. But again maternal feeling asserted itself. The kitten was safe now, and she could not afford to further endanger its precious life; holding it, drenched and whimpering, in her mouth, she trotted off into the woods and disappeared.