He struck the gate of the pen immediately beneath the two appalled watchers and stopped. He moved to the right and paused, whimpering in anxious agony. Back to the gate and over to the left, where he stopped and howled. Whatever the frightful compulsion was, whatever he sought, he could not deviate enough from his line to go around the pen. He looked, then, and for the first time saw the gate and the fence and the ophidian inhabitants of the den. They did not matter. Nothing mattered. He fumbled at the lock, then furiously attacked it and the gate and the fence with his club—fruitlessly. He tried to climb the fence, but failed. He tore off his shoes and socks and, by dint of jamming toes and fingers ruthlessly into the meshes, he began to climb.
No more than he had minded the thorns and the rocks did he mind the eight strands of viciously-barbed wire surmounting that fence; he did not wince as the inch-long steel fangs bit into arms and legs and body. He did, however, watch the snakes. He took pains to drop into an area temporarily clear of them, and he pounded to death the half-dozen serpents bold enough to bar his path.
Then, dropping to the ground, he writhed and scuttled about; sniffing ever harder; nose plowing the ground. He halted; dug his bleeding fingers into the hard soil; thrust his nose into the hole; inhaled tremendously. His body writhed, trembled, shuddered uncontrollably, then stiffened convulsively into a supremely ecstatic rigidity utterly horrible to see.
The terribly labored breathing ceased. The body collapsed bonelessly, even before the snakes crawled up and struck and struck and struck.
Jacqueline Comstock saw very little of the outrageous performance. She screamed once, shut both eyes, and, twisting about within the man’s encircling arm, burrowed her face into his left shoulder.
Ryder, however—white-faced, set-jawed, sweating—watched the thing to its ghastly end. When it was over he licked his lips and swallowed twice before he could speak.
“It’s all over, dear—no danger now,” he managed finally to say. “We’d better go. We ought to turn in an alarm . . . make a report or something.”
“Oh, I can’t, Bob—I can’t!” she sobbed. “If I open my eyes I just know I’ll look, and if I look I’ll . . . I’ll simply turn inside out!”
“Hold everything, Jackie! Keep your eyes shut. I’ll pilot you and tell you when we’re out of sight.”
More than half carrying his companion, Ryder set off down the rocky trail. Out of sight of what had happened, the girl opened her eyes and they continued their descent in a more usual, more decorous fashion until they met a man hurrying upward.