what he met with was a tangle of floating finery carrying a numbed
traveller on it, and with a snort of disappointment he turned again.

It was a poor chance, but better than nothing, and as he turned I tried
to throw a strand of silk I had unwound from the sodden mass over his
branching tines. Quick as thought the beast twisted his head aside and
tossed his antlers so that the try was fruitless. But was I to lose my
only chance of shore? With all my strength I hurled myself upon him,
missing my clutch again by a hair's-breadth and going headlong into the
salt furrow his chest was turning up. Happily I kept hold of the web,
for the great elk then turned back, passing between me and the ruck of
stuff and getting thereby the silk under his chin, and as I came gasping
to the top once more round came that dainty wreckage over his back,
and I clutched it, and sooner than it takes to tell I was towing to the
shore as perhaps no one was ever towed before.

The big beast dragged the ruck like withered weed behind him, bellowing
all the time with a voice which made the hills echo all round; and then,
when he got his feet upon the shallows, rose dripping and mountainous,
a very cliff of black hide and limb against the night shine, and with a
single sweep of his antlers tore the webbing from me, who lay prone and
breathless in the mud, and, thinking it was his enemy, hurled the limp
bundle on the beach, and then, having pounded it with his cloven feet
into formless shreds, bellowed again victoriously and went off into the
darkness of the forests.




CHAPTER IX