brute's head. One missed him, and the first seemed not to harm him
much, but the third hit him in some vital place, I hope,--some
sensitive place, at any rate, for the hideous jaws started wide.
Then, with my gun in my hand still, I began with all my might to
shout out, 'Rolf!" I couldn't leave my post, for the brute, though
he had let Rolf go, and had dived for a moment, might make another
spring, and I didn't dare to take my eyes off the spot where he had
gone down; but I called to my wounded beast with all my might, and
when he had struggled through the water and gained a moment's hold
of the rock, I jumped down and caught him, and somehow--I don't
know how--half carried and half dragged him up the little bit of
steep ascent, till we were safe on the top,--on the dry land again.
And then upon my word, I don't know what I did next, only I think,
as I looked at my darling's poor crushed limbs, with the blood
oozing from them, and heard his choking gasps for breath--I--I
forgot for a moment or two that I was a man at all, and burst out
crying like a child.

"Boys, you don't know what it is to feel that a living creature has
tried to give up his life for you, even though the creature is only
a soulless dog. Do you think I had another friend in the world who
would have done what Rolf had done for me? If I had, I did not know
it. And then when I thought that it was while he had been trying to
save my life that I had taken up my gun and struck him! There are
some things, my lads, that a man does without meaning any harm by
them, which yet, when he sees them by the light of after events, he
can never bear to look back upon without a sort of agony; and those
blows I gave to Rolf are of that sort. _He_ forgave them,--my
noble dog; but I have never forgiven myself for them to this hour.
When I saw him lying before me, with his blood trickling out upon