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Each had its centre of human life with life of bird and beast, and the centres were in touch with one another, connected like a row of children linked together by their hands; all together forming one organism, instinct with one life, moved by one mind, like a many-coloured serpent lying at rest, extended at full length upon the ground.
There was something so jolly about the Scarecrow's smile that the two creatures became friendly at once, and moreover told him the story of their lives. "As you have doubtless noted," began the larger creature, "I am an A-B-Sea Serpent. I am employed in the nursery of the Mer children to teach them their letters.
Presently the scorpion changed to an eagle, and the serpent at once became a griffin, which pursued the eagle a long while, till the latter became a black cat.
He then proceeded to speak in a purely impersonal tone of the magnificent services which he had rendered, not forgetting the famous episode of the serpent, and drew their attention to the fact that the late Grand Master had constituted him, Gozon, his principal lieutenant. He ended: "You have already tried my government, you know well that which you may hope to expect.
Love is the world's maker, master and destroyer, the magician whose word can change water to blood, and blood to fire, the dove to a serpent, and the serpent to a dove ay, and can make of that same dove an eagle, with an eagle's beak, and talons, and air-cleaving wing-stroke. Love is the spirit of life and the angel of death.
Now it is perfectly true that savages regard many elemental phenomena, from eclipses to the rainbow, as the result of the action of animals. Man raised a serpent to the skies, perhaps, but his interest in the animal began on earth, not in the clouds. It is excessively improbable, and quite unproved, that any race ever regarded lightning as the flashes of a mouse's teeth.
He became adviser, lawmaker and head. The right or wrong of God's action it does not become us to discuss. It is right because God did it. Dispute the right who will, but the curse lives. The serpent crawls on his belly and eats dust. The wife has sorrow in conception; her desire is to her husband, and he rules her; and man, by the sweat of his brow, eats his bread.
When they came he threw the serpent into that deep ocean by which the earth is surrounded. But the monster had grown to such an enormous size that holding his tail in his mouth he encircles the whole earth. Hela he cast into Niffleheim, and gave her power over nine worlds or regions, into which she distributes those who are sent to her; that is, all who die of sickness or old age.
Swimming hand over hand, Guy reached the bow and quickly drew himself over the side, just as the pursuing serpent came within seven or eight yards of the stern of the canoe. His original intention to paddle for the island was instantly abandoned.
The slight bank reached, there was uplifted a great serpent head, and then, without hesitation, the monster swept forward to the trees and soon hung dangling from the branches of the largest one, its great coils twined loosely about trunk and limb, its head swinging gently back and forth just below the lower branch.
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