The beam of light shifted till it lit on the floor halfway down the corridor; it fell on three boxes there.
From the outer box a cord led up through the quivering light. This cord tightened now, and raised a door at the end of the box; another cord tilted the box steeply.
“Look! Look! Look!” shrieked someone by the door.
Two rattlesnakes slid squirming from the box into that glowing circle—they writhed, coiled, swayed. Z-z-z—B-z-z-zt! The light went out with a snap.
“Will you fire first, gentlemen of the blackguards?” said Gwinne.
Someone screamed in the dark—and with that scream the mob broke. Crowding, cursing, yelling, trampling each other, fighting, the lynchers jammed through the door; they crashed through a fence, they tumbled over boulders—but they made time. A desultory fusillade followed them; merely for encouragement.
XII
“Ostrich, n. A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied the hinder toe in which so many pious naturalists have seen a conspicuous evidence of design. The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly.”