It was an animal, not a human shape.  And it was light-footed and swift and noiseless—­and it was white.  It had, indeed, every distinguishing trait of Cookie’s phantom pig.  Only it was not a pig.  My brief shadowy glimpse of it had told me that.  I knew what it was not, but what it was I could not, as I stood there rooted, even guess,

Would it attack me, or should I only die of fright?  I wondered if my heart were weak, and hoped it was, so that I should not live to feel the teeth of the unknown Thing sink in my flesh.  I thought of my revolver and after an infinity of time managed to draw it from the case.  My fingers seemed at once nervelessly limp and woodenly rigid.  This was not at all the dauntless front with which I had dreamed of meeting danger.  I had fancied myself with my automatic making a rather pretty picture as a young Amazon—­but I had now a dreadful fear that my revolver might spasmodically go off and wound the Thing, and then even if it had meditated letting me go it would certainly attack me.  Nevertheless I clung to my revolver as to my last hope.

I began to edge away crab-wise into the wood.  Like a metronome I said to myself over and over monotonously, don’t run, don’t run!  Dim legends about the power of the human eye floated through my brain.  But how quell the creature with my eye when I could not see it?  As for the hopeless expedient of screaming, I hadn’t courage for it.  I was silent, as I would fain have been invisible.  Only my dry lips kept muttering soundlessly, don’t run, don’t run!

I did not run.  Instead, I stepped on a smooth surface of rock and slid downhill like a human toboggan until I fetched up against a dead log.  I discovered it to be a dead log after a confused interval during which I vaguely believed myself to have been swallowed by an alligator.  While the alligator illusion endured I must have lain comatose and immovable.  Indeed, when my senses began to come back I was still quite inert.  I experienced that curious tranquillity which is said to visit those who are actually within the jaws of death.  There I lay prone, absolutely at the mercy of the mysterious white prowler of the forest—­and I did not care.  The whole petty business of living seemed a long way behind me now.

Languidly at last I opened my eyes.  Within three yards of me, in the open rock-paved glade where I had fallen, stood the Thing.

As softly as I had opened my eyes I shut them.  I had an annoyed conviction that they were deceiving me—­a very unworthy thing for eyes to do that were soon to be closed in death.  Again I lifted my lids.  Yes, there it was—­only now it had put an ear back and was sniffing at me with a mingling of interest and apprehension..

The strange beast of the jungle was a white bull-terrier.

Abruptly I sat up.  The terrier gave a startled sidewise bound, but paused again and stood regarding me.