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The nature of this lizard's food, as well as the structure of its tail and feet, and the fact of its having been seen voluntarily swimming out at sea, absolutely prove its aquatic habits; yet there is in this respect one strange anomaly, namely, that when frightened it will not enter the water.
On the diggings near the Avoca River the lizard's future master had, as was the digger's custom, come out of his hole, or shaft, at eleven o'clock for a short half-hour's rest between breakfast and the midday meal.
At the end of a friendly visit he was stepping into his canoe when his unofficially appointed executioner stepped quietly forward, levelled his double-barrelled gun, and shot "Lizard" dead. As a matter of course the affair did not end there: "Lizard's" tribe were bound in honour to retaliate. But upon whom? The Pakehas who had caused their chiefs death were far out of reach in the north.
He had absolutely wrecked a perfectly good scheme in the perfection of which several thousand dollars had been spent, and now there could not be even the possibility of a chance of their breaking even. When Jimmy got home that night he saw a light in the Lizard's room and entered. "Well," said the cracksman, "how's every little thing?" Jimmy smiled ruefully.
This used to grieve me for hours, and whilst one of the sisters was explaining to us, by figures on the blackboard, the metric system, I was wondering, with my lizard's tail in my hand, how I could fasten it on again. I used, very cruelly, to give flies to my spiders, and they, fat and well fed, would spin their webs.
There was also the artist, who could draw a lizard's head like a Japanese print, but preferred to depict impressionistic Laocoön roots. These and others sat with me on the long bench and watched the moonpath.
His nose was beaked, his dark eye had the shining quickness of a robin's. But there was nothing soft or gracious or feathery about him. The skin of his wrinkled brown face had a dry and scaly look; his hands were the hands of a crocodile. His movements were marked by the lizard's disconcertingly abrupt clockwork speed; his speech was thin, fluty, and dry.
He threw himself down in a half-sitting posture, and was dreamily smoking his pipe when from beneath a neighboring rock, popped out a little lizard who eyed the stranger with inquisitive interest, as quickly retiring, to return again in a few minutes. This was repeated several times, the lizard's keen eyes always fixed on the face of the intruder.
Even Zarathustra was once the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not divine the serpent's coil with which it was stuffed. A God's soul, I once thought I saw playing in your games, ye pure discerners! No better arts did I once dream of than your arts! Serpents' filth and evil odour, the distance concealed from me: and that a lizard's craft prowled thereabouts lasciviously.
The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighboring pool she could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution once more the pig-baby was sneezing on the Duchess' knee, while plates and dishes crashed around it once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the Lizard's slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs, filled the air, mixed up with the distant sob of the miserable Mock Turtle.
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