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Holding his spear with both hands he used it as a British yeoman of old handled a quarter-staff, and a whistling blow caught the reptile a couple of feet below the head, which dropped inert, the vertebrae being broken, and a series of blows from other spears, one aimed at the tail, finished the business.
Should he succeed in killing the Texan, with Conchita standing by and bearing witness to the deed, would be to forfeit his own life. He could find it in his heart to kill her too; but that would lead to the same result. Failing in his first blow, the great hunter would have him under his heel, to be crushed as a crawling reptile.
He saw that the sport was done and the snake was ready to strike; he strove to move, but could not; he essayed to speak, but the words choked him unuttered. He saw the reptile calling in its strength and "Quick, Howard, draw the blanket over you! He can't strike through that!"
Why is it that what is called the "human face divine" is sometimes gifted with a power to paralyse, that the most loathsome reptile in the creation cannot attain?
The snake was rolled up in a tight coil, and had evidently spent the night within a yard of the professor's head! Being unable to make out what sort of snake it was, and fearing that it might be a poisonous one, he crept quietly from his couch, keeping his eyes fixed on the reptile as he did so.
In their contact with the crocodiles the Dayaks show a fortitude almost beyond belief. A Dutch doctor once treated a man who had been dragged under water, but had the presence of mind to press a thumb into each eye of the reptile. He was badly mangled, but recovered.
“Here,” he said quietly. “What is it?” asked Ivan, trembling. “Kindly look at it,” Smerdyakov answered, still in the same low tone. Ivan stepped up to the table, took up the roll of paper and began unfolding it, but suddenly he drew back his fingers, as though from contact with a loathsome reptile. “Your hands keep twitching,” observed Smerdyakov, and he deliberately unfolded the bundle himself.
Gradually, however, the creature relaxed its hold, its coils fell slack around me, and untwisting it and throwing it from me as far as I was able, I sank down and swooned upon the bank. "When consciousness returned, the scene appeared like a terrible dream, till I saw the dead body of my reptile foe and my babe crying violently and nestling in my bosom.
And thou, red judge, if thou would say audibly all thou hast done in thought, then would every one cry: "Away with the nastiness and the virulent reptile!" But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them. An idea made this pale man pale.
It seems a strange story, yet it is a true one: I will give the dimensions of the reptile, so that the public may know that it was no puny monster. Its length was exactly thirteen feet, five inches and a quarter, and its circumference was thirteen inches and a half. The snake was of the Diamond species, and grows quite large in Australia.
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