Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/190

182 hollow of his hand; he saw the womanish beauty of Phaoleon's face, white and ghastly with a craven terror, turned backward one instant in the light of the moon, and a fierce delight, a just vengeance, heated his senses and throbbed in his veins. He panted for his foe*s life, as he hunted him on through the hot night, as the lion in chase may pant for the tiger's; all the passions in him, rare to rise, but wild, as the wildest tempest when once roused, were at their darkest, and the creed which chained them, and forbade him to fire on a man unarmed, served but to make each fibre strain, each nerve strengthen, with the fiercer thirst to race his injurer down, and—side to side, man to man—hurl him from his saddle and fling him to earth, held under his heel as he would have held the venomous coil of a snake, imprisoned and powerless, till its poisonous breath was trodden out on the sands.

They rode in hard and fearful chase, as men ride only for life and death. The surf flashed its salt spray in their eyes as they splashed through the sea-pools girth-deep in water; startled nest-birds flew with a rush from bud and bough, as they crashed through the wild pomegranates; white-winged galls rose up with a shrill