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"Come here, you old hag," said I. She approached trembling, for she saw that escape from me was impossible, and that her guilt was detected. I seized a sharp knife, and taking her by her few remaining grey and woolly hairs, said, "Obeah's work must be done: I do not order it, but he commands it; drink that coffee instantly."
And, now feeling fear no more than pain, Stern crouched to meet his onslaught. It all happened in a moment of time, a moment, long in seeming as an hour. The girl's revolver crackled, there behind him. Stern saw a little round bluish hole take shape in the obeah's ear, and red drops start. Then with a ghastly screaming, the Thing was upon him. Out struck the engineer, with the rifle-barrel.
Stern saw and rejoiced in the sight that the obeah's jaw hung surely broken, all awry. The quick-blinking, narrow-ridded eyes shuttled here, there, as the creature sought to spy out his enemies. The nostrils dilated, to catch the spoor of man. Man, no longer god, but mortal. One hand held a crackling pine-knot.
"Come here, you old hag," said I. She approached trembling, for she saw that escape from me was impossible, and that her guilt was detected. I seized a sharp knife, and taking her by her few remaining grey and woolly hairs, said, "Obeah's work must be done: I do not order it, but he commands it; drink that coffee instantly."
Beatrice snatched up the fallen revolver. She stumbled; and the pail was empty. Spurting, splashing away, the precious water flew. No time, now, for any more. For all about them, behind them and on every hand, the Things were closing in. They had seen blood had heard the obeah's cry; they knew! Not gods, now, but mortal creatures! Not gods! "Run! Run!" gasped Beatrice.
It had lost all power, all control. For God's sake, what could it be? Then all this taking but a second Stern saw; he knew the truth. Staring, pale and horrified, he understood. There, through the fleshy part of his forearm, thrust clean from side to side by a lightning-swift stroke, he saw the obeah's spear! It dangled strangely in the firm muscles.
By the glare Allan noticed that the man's jaw hung oddly awry, even as the obeah's had hung, in Madison Forest. "Jove, what a wallop that must have been!" thought he, now perceiving for the first time that his knuckles were cut and bleeding. "Old Monahan himself taught me that in the Harvard gym a thousand odd years ago and it still works.
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