"
We moved back a dozen yards or so. It was like a scene in some
impossible play, or in some ghastly and oppressive nightmare from which
I should presently awake to find the blankets all heaped up upon my
chest.
By some method undoubtedly mental, but which, in my confusion and
excitement, I failed to understand, the doctor accomplished his purpose,
and the next minute I heard him say sharply under his breath, "It's out!
Now watch!"
At this very moment a sudden gust from the sea blew aside the mist, so
that a lane opened to the sky, and the moon, ghastly and unnatural as
the effect of stage limelight, dropped down in a momentary gleam upon
the door of Sangree's tent, and I perceived that something had moved
forward from the interior darkness and stood clearly defined upon the
threshold. And, at the same moment, the tent ceased its shuddering and
held still.
There, in the doorway, stood an animal, with neck and muzzle thrust
forward, its head poking into the night, its whole body poised in that
attitude of intense rigidity that precedes the spring into freedom, the
running leap of attack.
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