226
PARTISAN
' R'EVIEW
be adored and to be feared, all that is alien in nature and in beauty:
and stood becharmed. But as the others ran up, within an instant so
swift that it was impossible to see just what transpired among those
curves of liquid paroxysm, with a chilly rasping against stone which
excited Richard as nothing he had ever heard before had excited
him,
drawing a stripe of coldness down his spine, the snake reversed direc–
tion and slipped rapidly between the ankles of briars and beneath: fallen
leaves, his brilliance a constant betrayal. The others were shouting and
Jimmy shoved
a.
stick under the snake and flipped him so expertly that
for a couple of seconds he sailed on the air in a convulsion of escape,
a fluid hieroglyph, and landed on open rock in a humiliating flash of
ivory belly before he righted himself and with oily fleetness made once
more for the bushes. But now Hobe reared up a rock so heavy he could
lift it only clumsily, high above his reeling head; and Richard, standing
just behind him, felt himself reach toward the rock to pull it back–
wards out of his hands. But even as his own hand lifted forward he
became aware of Jimmy's astounded eye on him, and thus became
aware of what he was doing and caught himself, realizing that they
would never understand why he did it, that they would be angry with
him and rightly so and might even be mad enough to jump on him;
and becoming thus aware, became aware also that it was not only his
habit of gentleness to animals which made him want to spare the snake,
but something new in him which he could not understand, about which
he was profoundly uneasy. These several kinds of awareness came over
him with terrible speed and transfixed him into the slowness of a
dream, so that the fraction of a second froze the high rock, the in–
credulous bystander, the bemused hand, and seemed to last almost
interminably, while he strove to stay his hand and to set it free. But
it was after all only an instant, and before he could bring himself out
of this hesitation, Hobe brought the rock crashing down against rock
and against one arc of the veering snake which, angled like a broken
whip, continued uselessly to thrust energy through its ruptured body, its
eyes terrible, its tongue so busy that its speed made the shadow of a
blossom. Jimmy hurried up with his stick and beat at its head but the
head was still alert to dodge under his blows. Richard felt for a moment
as if he had just finished retching. Then he picked up a small rock
and yelling
«Get out of the
way,"
squatted beside the snake and pounded
at its head. The head lashed about his fist like summer lightning as he
pounded and in the darkness of his violence the question darted, over
and over,
is he poison? is he poison?
but he cared only for one thing,
to put as quick an end as he could to all this terrible, ruined, futile
