And saying this, he burst into another roar of laughter. The laughter proved contagious. Arthur and Phil both joined in. Their recent horror had been so great, that this sudden and unexpected turn affected them in a comical way, and the reaction was in proportion to their former panic fear. So their laughter was loud, boisterous, and unrestrained. At the very moment when this cry had burst forth from Bruce, together with the peals of laughter, Tom had shrunk back in horror from the black muzzle that appeared on his right. But as he did so, and at the very moment of this horror in which his eyes were fixed on the monster, this monster became plainly revealed, and he saw it as it was. He saw, what Bruce and the others now saw--a dog! a dog whose long, sharp muzzle and forehead were above the water, as also part of his back and his tail. He was a hound of some kind. Where he had come from, or where he was going to, or why he had appeared among them, they were, of course, unable to conjecture. Their whole recent terror had thus been the result of pure fancy in Tom’s case, and in the case of the others the result of Tom’s first shriek of alarm. In the case of all of them, however, the whole trouble was owing to the belief, of which they were not yet able to divest themselves, that this cove was some very sequestered spot. So convinced had they been of this, that even the sight of a public road had not altogether disabused them. They had been determined to find here the haunt of the buccaneers, and were unwilling to think that it might be a common resort, or even a regular thoroughfare. And therefore, when Torn had first caught sight of this black muzzle appearing above the surface of the water, he had been incapable of thinking about anything except a shark; and the horror that this thought created within him had been communicated to the others by his cries. Tom was the real cause of the whole mistake, and no one felt this more keenly than Tom himself; yet the others were all too much ashamed of their own recent terrors to twit or taunt him with his unfounded alarm. The dog now swam alongside of Tom, and a little ahead of him, turning once or twice, and showing his face--not the cruel face of a monster of the deep, but the mild, humane, civilized, and benevolent countenance of a hound of the highest respectability; a face the sight of which made Tom feel renewed shame at his foolish and baseless fears.