Page:Edward Ellis--Seth Jones.djvu/94

Rh recovering from it There was that dim consciousness—that indistinct knowledge of the outer world— that certainty, that we can break the bond that holds us, by one vigorous effort, and yet the same sluggish indifference that prevents the attempt.

Haldidge drew his breath faintly and slowly, yielding more and more to that fatal subtle influence. He knew he was charmed, and yet he couldn't help it. It was now impossible to shake off that weight which pressed him down like an incubus. That outer world—so to speak—had now receded, and he was in another, from which he could not return without help beside his own. He seemed to be moving, flitting, sinking, and rising, though the thin air, borne upward and downward, hither and thither, on a wing of fire. The spell was complete. That extraordinary power which instinct holds over reason—that wonderful superiority which a reptile sometimes shows he can exert over man, the snake now held over the hunter.

At this point, from some cause or other, one of the savages struck the log a violent blow with his hatchet. Haldidge heard it. He drew a long breath, closed his eyes, and when he reopened them, looked down at his hands upon which his chin had been resting.

The charm was broken! the hunter had shaken off the fatal spell!

Like the knocking at the gate in Macbeth, which dispels the dark, awful world of gloom in which the murderers have been moving and living, and ushers in our own world, with all its hurrying tide of human life and passions; so this blow of the Indian's tomahawk broke the subtle, magnetic spell of the serpent, and lifted the heavy mantle-like influence which wrapped Haldidge in its folds.

He looked downward, and determined not to raise his eyes again, for he knew the same power would again rise above him. The serpent, seemingly conscious of its loss of influence, rattled once more, and prepared to strike. Haldidge stirred not a muscle, in fact, he had scarcely moved since entering the log. But the snake did not strike. The continued, death-like stillness of the hunter, evidently seemed to the reptile to be death itself. He coiled and uncoiled himself several times,