Keeping them on it still, he rose slowly from the chair, realizing that his
chances would be better if he were in the middle of the room. He stepped
round in front of his table and walked two paces straight forward and then
paused, his face as white, as terrible, as death. At the instant of his
moving he could see the tense drawing in of all the muscles of the cougar
and the ripple of its skin, as its whole body quivered with excitement and
desire; and he knew that as soon as he stopped it would make its spring.
With a growl that announces that all hiding and stealth are over, the leap
came. He had thrown his body slightly forward to meet it with the last
thought that whatever happened he must guard his throat. It was at this that
the cougar aimed, leaping almost perpendicularly, its widespread fore feet
reaching for his shoulders, while the hind feet grasped at his legs. The
under part of its body being thus exposed, he dealt it a blow with all his
strength--full in the belly with his foot, and hurled it backward. For a
second it crouched again, measuring him anew, then sprang again. Again he
struck, but this time the fore feet caught his arm as they passed backward;
the sharp, retractile nails tore their way across the back and palm of his
hand like dull knives and the blood gushed. Instantly the cougar leaped upon
the long, wooden desk that ran alone one side of the room, and from that
advantage, sprang again but he bent his body low so that it passed clean
over him. Instantly it was upon his desk at his back; and before he could
more than recover his balance and turn, it sprang for the fourth time. He
threw out his arm to save his throat, but the cougar had reached his left
shoulder, struck its claws deep into his heavy coat; and with a deafening
roar sounding close in his ears, had buried its fangs near the base of his
neck, until he heard them click as they met through his flesh.
He staggered, but the desk behind caught him. Straightening himself up, and
grappling the panther with all his strength as he would a man, he turned
with it and bent it over the sharp edge of the ponderous desk, lower, lower,
trying to break its back. One of the fore feet was beginning to tear through
his clothing, and straightening himself up again, he reached down and caught
this foot and tried to bend it, break it. He threw himself with all his
force upon the floor, falling with the cougar under him, trying to crush it.
He staggered to his feet again, but stepped on his own blood and fell. And
then, feeling his blood trickling down his breast and his strength going,
with one last effort he put up his hands and seizing the throat, fastened
his fingers like iron rivets around the windpipe. And then--with the long,
loud, hoarse, despairing roar with which a man, his mouth half full of
water, sinks far out in the ocean--he fell again.