第31章

Opening his eyes to look up for the last time at the peaceful stars, what he perceived above him were two nearer stars set close together, burning with a green light, never twinkling.Or another was startled out of sleep by the terrible cry of his tethered horse.Or after a long, ominous growl, the cougar had sprung against his tent, knocking it away as a squirrel would knock the thin shell from a nut to reach the kernel; or at the edge of the thicket of tall grass he had struck his foot against the skeleton of some unknown hunter, dragged down long before.

To such adventures with all their natural exaggeration John Gray had listened many a time as they were recited by old hunters regarding earlier days in the wilderness; for at this period it was thought that the cougar had retreated even from the few cane-brakes that remained unexplored near the settlements.But the deer, timidest of animals, with fatal persistence returns again and again to its old-time ranges and coverts long after the bison, the bear, and the elk have wisely abandoned theirs; and the cougar besets the deer.

It was these stories that he remembered now and that filled him with horror, with the faintness of death.His turn had come at last, he said; and as to the others, it had come without warning.He was too shackled with weakness to cry out, to stand up.The windows on each side were fastened; there was no escape.There was nothing in the room on which he could lay hold--no weapon or piece of wood, or bar of iron.If a struggle took place, it would be a clean contest between will and will, courage and courage, strength and strength, the love of prey and the love of life.It was well for him that this was not the first time he had ever faced death, as he had supposed; and that the first thought that had rushed into his consciousness before returned to him now.That thought was this: that death had come far too soon, putting an end to his plans to live, to act, to succeed, to make a great and a good place for himself in this world before he should leave it for another.Out of this a second idea now liberated itself with incredible quickness and spread through him like a living flame: it was his lifelong attitude of victory, his lifelong determination that no matter what opposed him he must conquer.Young as he was, this triumphant habit had already yielded him its due result that growth of character which arises silently within us, built up out of a myriad nameless elements--beginning at the very bottom of the ocean of unconsciousness; growing as from cell to cell, atom to atom--the mere dust of victorious experience--the hardening deposits of the ever-living, ever-working, ever-rising will; until at last, based on eternal quietude below and lifting its wreath of palms above the waves of life, it stands finished, indestructible, our inward rock of defence against every earthly storm.

Soon his face was worth going far to see.He had grown perfectly calm.His weakness had been followed by a sense of strength wholly extraordinary.His old training in the rough athletics of the wilderness had made him supple, agile, wary, long-winded.His eyes hadnever known what it was to be subdued;he had never taken them from the cougar.

Keeping them on it still, he rose slowly from the chair, realizing that his chances would be better if he were in the middle of the room.He stepped round in front of his table and walked two paces straight forward and then paused, his face as white, as terrible, as death.At the instant of his moving he could see the tense drawing in of all the muscles of the cougar and the ripple of its skin, as its whole body quivered with excitement and desire; and he knew that as soon as he stopped it would make its spring.

With a growl that announces that all hiding and stealth are over, the leap came.He had thrown his body slightly forward to meet it with the last thought that whatever happened he must guard his throat.It was at this that the cougar aimed, leaping almost perpendicularly, its widespread fore feet reaching for his shoulders, while the hind feet grasped at his legs.The under part of its body being thus exposed, he dealt it a blow with all his strength--full in the belly with his foot, and hurled it backward.For a second it crouched again, measuring him anew, then sprang again.Again he struck, but this time the fore feet caught his arm as they passed backward;the sharp, retractile nails tore their way across the back and palm of his hand like dull knives and the blood gushed.Instantly the cougar leaped upon the long, wooden desk that ran alone one side of the room, and from that advantage, sprang again but he bent his body low so that it passed clean over him.Instantly it was upon his desk at his back; and before he could more than recover his balance and turn, it sprang for the fourth time.He threw out his arm to save his throat, but the cougar had reached his left shoulder, struck its claws deep into his heavy coat; and with a deafening roar sounding close in his ears, had buried its fangs near the base of his neck, until he heard them click as they met through his flesh.

He staggered, but the desk behind caught him.Straightening himself up, and grappling the panther with all his strength as he would a man, he turned with it and bent it over the sharp edge of the ponderous desk, lower, lower, trying to break its back.One of the fore feet was beginning to tear through his clothing, and straightening himself up again, he reached down and caught this foot and tried to bend it, break it.He threw himself with all his force upon the floor, falling with the cougar under him, trying to crush it.

He staggered to his feet again, but stepped on his own blood and fell.And then, feeling his blood trickling down his breast and his strength going, with one last effort he put up his hands and seizing the throat, fastened his fingers like iron rivets around the windpipe.And then--with the long, loud, hoarse, despairing roar with which a man, his mouth half full of water, sinks far out in the ocean--he fell again.