might upon my breast and drove me backwards, howling So wildly that
many a time since, boys, I have thought I must have been no better
than a blind, perverse fool, not to have guessed what the trouble
was; but the fact is, I was a conceited young fellow (as most young
fellows are), and because I imagined the poor beast was trying for
some reason of his own to get his own way, I thought it was my
business to teach him that he was not to get his own way, but that
I was to get mine; and so I beat him down somehow,--I don't like to
think of it now; I struck him again three or four times with the
end of my gun, till at last I got myself freed from him.

"He gave a cry when he fell back. I call it a cry, for it was more
like something human than a dog's howl,--something so wild and
pathetic that, angry as I was, it startled me, and I almost think,
if time enough had been given me, I would have made some last
attempt then to understand what the creature meant; but I had no
time after that. I was standing a few feet in from the water, and
as soon as I had shaken him off he went to the edge of the bit of
cliff, and stood there for a moment till I came up to him, and
then--just as in another second I should have jumped into the
sea--my brave dog, my noble dog, gave one last whine and one look
into my face, and took the leap before me. And then, boys, in
another instant I saw what he had meant. He had scarcely touched
the water when I saw a crocodile slip like lightning from a sunny
ledge of the cliff, and grip him by the hinder legs.

"You know that I had my gun close at hand, and in the whole course
of my life I never was so glad to have my gun beside me. It was
loaded, too, and a revolver. I caught it up, and fired into the
water. I fired three times, and two of the shots went into the