CHAPTER XXV
AN IRISH-INDIAN ONSLAUGHT
Carlota leaped to her feet and Dennis tried to rise, but a heavy foot was on his breast and a stern face bent over him, while an uplifted forefinger pointed dismay into his inmost soul.
“Me hour has come!” thought the unhappy fellow, but he made no further effort to move. The command of those unflinching eyes was not to be disobeyed. He wondered if the intruder’s hand held the weapon with which he would be killed, but was almost too terrified to care. In his horror he felt himself already dying and his eyelids fluttered back into place as if for the last time.
“Oh! that is his salvation! If he will only keep them shut till it is over!” thought Carlota, watching.
After her sudden uprising she had not moved, and this fact was a relief to the stranger, so steadily regarding the prostrate Irishman. If she had screamed it would, probably, have brought the affair to a fatal and immediate climax. Thus a moment passed; another—more—an interminable time! The trio of human beings remained rigid, spellbound by as many varying emotions, while those terrible ten minutes which seemed an eternity dragged by. Then the foot was lifted from Dennis’s chest and he was gruffly ordered to: “Get up.”
At first, he was powerless to obey. Not until the sound of a sharp blow, followed by a grunt of satisfaction sent a thrill of new life through his palsied veins. Then he rose and saw the man who had menaced him standing a few feet away and pointing to the ground where he lay, crushed to lifelessness, a monstrous and most poisonous centipede.
“He died, not you,” said the stranger, in broken English.
“Yes, Dennis! That dreadful thing was almost upon your throat. Oh! horrible,” cried Carlota.
Dennis threw back his knotted hand to his neck and plucked away an imaginary reptile. He began to feel them crawling over him, everywhere. He had not sufficient composure left in which to thank the stranger, who, however, expected nothing of the sort. He comforted the Irishman by saying:
“No more. Mate killed. Not plenty.”