Stephano, still retaining the sword in his hand, pursued her with a celerity which was sustained by his desire to possess her and by his rage that she had escaped him. But the race was unequal as that of a lion in chase of a roe; for Nisida seemed borne along as it were upon the very air. Leaving the groves on her left she dashed into the vale. Along the sunny bank of the limpid stream she sped;—on, on toward a forest that bounded the valley at the further end, and rose amphitheatrically up toward the regions of the mountains!
Stephano Verrina still pursued her, though losing ground rapidly; but still he maintained the chase. And now the verge of the forest is nearly gained; and in its mazes Nisida hopes to be enabled to conceal herself from the ruffian whom, by a glance hastily cast behind from time to time, she ascertains to be upon her track. But, oh! whither art thou flying thus wildly, beauteous Nisida?—into what appalling perils art thou rushing, as it were, blindly? For there, in the tallest tree on the verge of the forest to which thou now art near,—there, amidst the bending boughs and the quivering foliage—one of the hideous serpents which infest the higher region of the isle is disporting—the terrible anaconda—the monstrous boa, whose dreadful coils, if wound round that fair form of thine, would crush it into a loathsome mass!
CHAPTER XLII.
THE TEMPTATION—THE ANACONDA.
In the meantime Fernand Wagner was engaged in the attempt to cross the chain of mountains which intersected the island whereon the shipwreck had thrown him. He had clambered over rugged rocks and leapt across many yawning chasms in that region of desolation,—a region which formed so remarkable a contrast with the delicious scenery which he had left behind him. And now he reached the base of a conical hill, the summit of which seemed to have been split into two parts: and the sinuous tracks of the lava-streams, now cold, and hard, and black, adown its sides, convinced him that this was the volcano, from whose rent crater had poured the bituminous fluid so fatal to the vegetation of that region.
Following a circuitous and naturally formed pathway round the base, he reached the opposite side; and now from a height of three hundred feet above the level of the sea, his eyes commanded a view of a scene as fair as that behind the range of mountains. He was now for the first time convinced of what he had all along suspected—namely, that it was indeed an island on which the storm had cast him. But though from the eminence where he stood his view embraced the immense range of the ocean, no speck in the horizon—no sail upon the bosom of the expanse imparted hope to his soul.
Hunger now oppressed him; for he had eaten nothing since the noon of the preceding day, when he had plucked a few fruits in the groves on the other side of the island. He accordingly commenced a descent toward the new region which lay stretched before him, fair as—even fairer than—the one which had first greeted his eyes.
But he had not proceeded many yards amidst the defiles of the rugged rocks which nature had piled around the base of the volcano, when he found his way suddenly barred by a vast chasm, on the verge of which the winding path stopped.
The abyss was far too wide to be crossed save by the wing of the bird: and in its unfathomable depths boiled and roared a torrent, the din of whose eddies was deafening to the ear.
Wagner retraced his way to the very base of the volcano, and entered another defile: but this also terminated on the edge of the same precipice.
Again and again did he essay the various windings of that scene of rock and crag: but with no better success than at first; and after passing a considerable time in these fruitless attempts to find a means of descent into the plains below, he began to fear that he should be compelled to retrace his way into the region of verdure which he had quitted the day before, and which lay behind the range of mountains. But the thought of the hideous snake which he had seen in the tree caused a cold shudder to pass over him—then, in the next moment, he remembered that if the region on one side of the mountain were invested with reptiles of that terrible species, it was not probable that the forests which he beheld as it were at his feet, were free from the same source of apprehension. Still he had hoped to find human companionship on this side of the mountains which he had so far succeeded in reaching—the companionship of the man who had cast away the doublet, and of the woman whom he had seen in the mirage.