Look again! See the black monster, how he draws nearer and nearer, his huge, shapeless, terrible body rolling and swaying as he rides along on his black wings, while, like a gigantic serpent, his tail drags over the fair earth, hissing, writhing and curling, now on this side, now on that, now coiling upward to gather strength, now beating and threshing the plain with a roar mighty enough to plunge the stoutest heart into despair.
Ah, Bulger! It comes! ’Tis here! We move! It lifts us! Away! Away! We ride on the bosom of the gale! What a roar! How dark! How black! The storm-king strangles me! Bulger, I die—
“Where am I? Ah, Bulger, good dog! Has the princess called us yet?
“King Bô-gôô-gôô comes to-day.
“We must amuse him!”
I made an effort to rise.
The cords held me down.
By degrees the shadows lifted from my mind, and thoughts of the storm-king’s coming flashed through my brain, and how he had lifted the platform upon which we were bound, and borne it away, away, as if it were a feather caught up by the wind in play!
Something tickled my cheek.