I called to him to wake, but called many times in vain.  Then I decided to shake him, and had already moved forward to do so vigorously when there came a sound of footsteps padding softly behind me, and I felt a stream of hot breath burn my neck as I stooped.  I turned sharply.  The tent door was darkened and something silently swept in.  I felt a rough and shaggy body push past me, and knew that the animal had returned.  It seemed to leap forward between me and Sangree—­in fact, to leap upon Sangree, for its dark body hid him momentarily from view, and in that moment my soul turned sick and coward with a horror that rose from the very dregs and depths of life, and gripped my existence at its central source.

The creature seemed somehow to melt away into him, almost as though it belonged to him and were a part of himself, but in the same instant—­that instant of extraordinary confusion and terror in my mind—­it seemed to pass over and behind him, and, in some utterly unaccountable fashion, it was gone.  And the Canadian woke and sat up with a start.

“Quick!  You fool!” I cried, in my excitement, “the beast has been in your tent, here at your very throat while you sleep like the dead.  Up, man!  Get your gun!  Only this second it disappeared over there behind your head.  Quick! or Joan—!”

And somehow the fact that he was there, wide-awake now, to corroborate me, brought the additional conviction to my own mind that this was no animal, but some perplexing and dreadful form of life that drew upon my deeper knowledge, that much reading had perhaps assented to, but that had never yet come within actual range of my senses.

He was up in a flash, and out.  He was trembling, and very white.  We searched hurriedly, feverishly, but found only the traces of paw-marks passing from the door of his own tent across the moss to the women’s.  And the sight of the tracks about Mrs. Maloney’s tent, where Joan now slept, set him in a perfect fury.

“Do you know what it is, Hubbard, this beast?” he hissed under his breath at me; “it’s a damned wolf, that’s what it is—­a wolf lost among the islands, and starving to death—­desperate.  So help me God, I believe it’s that!”

He talked a lot of rubbish in his excitement.  He declared he would sleep by day and sit up every night until he killed it.  Again his rage touched my admiration; but I got him away before he made enough noise to wake the whole Camp.

“I have a better plan than that,” I said, watching his face closely.  “I don’t think this is anything we can deal with.  I’m going to send for the only man I know who can help.  We’ll go to Waxholm this very morning and get a telegram through.”

Sangree stared at me with a curious expression as the fury died out of his face and a new look of alarm took its place.

“John Silence,” I said, “will know—­”

“You think it’s something—­of that sort?” he stammered.