Jones looked upon me fiercely, then turned away; when all on a sudden such a long unearthly quaver of a cry came down through the stillness, from somewhere aloft in the island, that at first I didn't know what to think, unless one of our look-out men had met with an accident, and tumbled down. 'Twas so dark where they were, however, there was no seeing them. Without looking for himself, Jones faced me, shivering all over. "What is that, Mr Collins?" whispered he, catching my arm with a clutch like death, "_is_ there anything yonder--behind--behind--sir?" On the flat head of the crag north-westward, black against the pale glimmer over the very spot where we had stood half-an-hour before, to my utter horror, there was some creature or other sitting as if it looked toward the sea; and just then another wild, quivering, eddying sound came evidently enough from it, like a thing that would never end. It wasn't a human voice that!--my very brain spun with it, as I glanced to Jones. "Good heavens!" I said, "_what_? But by Jove! now I think of it; yes--'tis the howl of a _dog_--nothing else!" "Eight--ten years!" said Jones, hoarsely, "without food, too, and enough in that well to have poisoned whole gangs of men for twenty years--_can_ it be an earthly being, sir?" The stare he gave me at the moment was more frightful than aught else, but I mentioned what Westwood and I had observed the day before. Before I well knew what he meant, Jones was stealing swiftly up the rising ground to the shoulder of it. I saw him get suddenly on a level with the creature, his musket aiming for it--there was a flash and a shot that left the height as bare as before--and next minute, with a short whimpering howl, the animal flew down the hill, while I heard Jones crashing through the bushes after it, till he was lost in the dark. Such a terrible notion it gave me of his strange story being true, whereas before I had almost fancied it partly a craze of his, from having lived here alone--that for a moment or two it seemed to my mind we were still in the midst of it. I hurried back to our post, and close upon morning Jones came over and lay down by himself without a word, haggard and covered with sweat.