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The next moment he was at the window in the light of the dazzling sun, which radiated, not light, but raven-black darkness, like a hole in the heavens pouring out night. The wind suddenly began to moan and howl about the house. It whistled derisively through the door cracks, like the jeers and taunts of a mob of rowdies. Or was it Mr. Rinck's cat miauing? Or was it children whimpering in the hall?
One, two, three, four; seven of spades! It is all over, madame; your cat no longer exists!" "They have eaten him, the cannibals!" cried Mother Michel, sinking back, and she fancied she heard a plaintive miau, the last agonized cry of Moumouth. But it was not an illusion; a cat had miaued, and was still miauing in the next chamber.
A half-score were grouped about the hogshead and its occupant, with their tails wound round their feet, and were solemnly observing the work of reanimating the stranger. Here and there among taciturn felines of larger growth little spike-tail kits were rolling, cuffing, frolicking and miauing. For a moment the scene seemed a part of his delirium. Parker turned round to survey his benefactor.
Miauing, the black cat jumped out and with singed fur sought safety in flight. She too now went away, slowly, one step at a time, often stopping and looking back: would not the fire go out again? She began to feel anxious. Had she perhaps not carefully enough raked the great fire in the hearth out into the room and spread it about the floor? And covered it with straw and oil-soaked rags?
He observed the huge arcs that the lights on the mast described. He observed the regular onslaught of the waves, and above the seething and foaming of the water, he heard the miauing of the wind in the rigging, a wicked obstinate miauing, accompanied by the sudden spitting and leaping of a tiger.
Moumouth had not yet dined that day, and he made it plain by expressive miauing that he would very willingly place something under his teeth. Presently, Mother Michel said to him for she spoke to him as if he were an intelligent being, "Have patience, sir; we are going to attend to you."
For it is well known that should the family cat fall to miauing on Christmas Eve, and especially while the supper is in progress, very dreadful things surely will happen to the family during the ensuing year. Fortunately Nanoun's preventive measures averted this calamity; yet were they like to have overshot their mark.
We all remained where we were quaking with anxiety, when the ground opened in front of us and a black and white cat leapt out, its hair standing on end, and miauing frightfully. At its heels was a wolf, who had almost seized it, when the cat changed itself into a worm, and, piercing the skin of a pomegranate which had tumbled from a tree, hid itself in the fruit.
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