twitched and it shifted the weight of its body on to the hind legs.
Then, lifting its head and muzzle to the sky, it opened its long jaws
and gave vent to a dismal and prolonged howling.

But, when I heard that howling rise to heaven, the breath caught and
strangled in my throat and it seemed that my heart missed a beat; for,
though the sound was entirely animal, it was at the same time entirely
human. But, more than that, it was the cry I had so often heard in the
Western States of America where the Indians still fight and hunt and
struggle--it was the cry of the Redskin!

"The Indian blood!" whispered John Silence, when I caught his arm for
support; "the ancestral cry."

And that poignant, beseeching cry, that broken human voice, mingling
with the savage howl of the brute beast, pierced straight to my very
heart and touched there something that no music, no voice, passionate or
tender, of man, woman or child has ever stirred before or since for one
second into life. It echoed away among the fog and the trees and lost
itself somewhere out over the hidden sea. And some part of
myself--something that was far more than the mere act of intense
listening--went out with it, and for several minutes I lost
consciousness of my surroundings and felt utterly absorbed in the pain
of another stricken fellow-creature.

Again the voice of John Silence recalled me to myself.

"Hark!" he said aloud. "Hark!"

His tone galvanised me afresh. We stood listening side by side.

Far across the island, faintly sounding through the trees and brushwood,
came a similar, answering cry. Shrill, yet wonderfully musical, shaking
the heart with a singular wild sweetness that defies description, we
heard it rise and fall upon the night air.

"It's across the lagoon," Dr. Silence cried, but this time in full tones
that paid no tribute to caution. "It's Joan! She's answering him!"

Again the wonderful cry rose and fell, and that same instant the animal
lowered its head, and, muzzle to earth, set off on a swift easy canter
that took it off into the mist and out of our sight like a thing of wind
and vision.

The doctor made a quick dash to the door of Sangree's tent, and,
following close at his heels, I peered in and caught a momentary glimpse
of the small, shrunken body lying upon the branches but half covered by
the blankets--the cage from which most of the life, and not a little of
the actual corporeal substance, had escaped into that other f