At the same moment the hermit pulled him violently back, and, placing himself in a firm attitude full in front of the cavern, held the point of the spear advanced before him.
"Martin," he whispered, "shoot an arrow straight into that hole,--quick!" Martin obeyed, and the arrow whizzed through the aperture.

Instantly there issued from it a savage and tremendous roar, so awful that it seemed as if the very mountain were bellowing and that the cavern were its mouth.

But not a muscle of the hermit's figure moved.

He stood like a bronze statue,--his head thrown back and his chest advanced, with one foot planted firmly before him and the spear pointing towards the cave.
It seemed strange to Martin that a man should face what appeared to him unknown danger so boldly and calmly; but he did not consider that the hermit knew exactly the amount of danger before him.

He knew precisely the manner in which it would assail him, and he knew just what was necessary to be done in order to avert it; and in the strength of that knowledge he stood unmoved, with a slight smile upon his tightly compressed lips.
Scarcely had the roar ceased when it was repeated with tenfold fierceness; the bushes and fern leaves shook violently, and an enormous and beautifully spotted jaguar shot through the air as if it had been discharged from a cannon's mouth.