cat. He had seized the water-bottle by its neck and brought it
down with a shivering crash upon the head of the strange beast. He
repeated the blow, and then stabbed and jobbed with the jagged end of
it, in the darkness, where he judged the face might be.

The small teeth relaxed their hold, and at once Woodhouse pulled his
leg free and kicked hard. He felt the sickening feel of fur and bone
giving under his boot. There was a tearing bite at his arm, and he
struck over it at the face, as he judged, and hit damp fur.

There was a pause; then he heard the sound of claws and the dragging
of a heavy body away from him over the observatory floor. Then there
was silence, broken only by his own sobbing breathing, and a sound
like licking. Everything was black except the parallelogram of the
blue skylight with the luminous dust of stars, against which the end
of the telescope now appeared in silhouette. He waited, as it seemed,
an interminable time. Was the thing coming on again? He felt in his
trouser-pocket for some matches, and found one remaining. He tried
to strike this, but the floor was wet, and it spat and went out. He
cursed. He could not see where the door was situated. In his struggle
he had quite lost his bearings. The strange beast, disturbed by the
splutter of the match, began to move again. "Time!" called Woodhouse,
with a sudden gleam of mirth, but the thing was not coming at him
again. He must have hurt it, he thought, with the broken bottle. He
felt a dull pain in his ankle. Probably he was bleeding there. He
wondered if it would support him if he tried to stand up. The night
outside was very still. There was no sound of any one moving. The
sleepy fools had not heard those wings battering upon the dome, nor
his shouts. It was no good wasting strength in shouting. The monster
flapped its wings and startled him into a defensive attitude. He hit
his elbow against the seat, and it fell over with a crash. He cursed
this, and then he cursed the darkness.

Suddenly the oblong patch of starlight seemed to sway to and fro. Was
he going to faint? It would never do to faint. He clenched his fists
and set his teeth to hold himself together. Where had the door got
to? It occurred to him he could get his bearings by the stars visible
through the skylight. The patch of stars he saw was in Sagittarius and
south-eastward; the door was north--or was it north by west? He tried
to think. If he could get the door open he might r