In Bar Noemi's breast the flames of a superhuman enthusiasm began to glow. Round about him swarmed the raging multitude; before him the uncouth and unearthly monster towered up to heaven. With a far-resounding voice he spoke to the crowd—
"Ye dwellers in the dust! Ye dust-worshippers, whom neither blessing, nor cursing, neither good nor evil days, can turn from your sins. Ye loathsome worms, let the tenth plague smite you that ye may have none to pray to. Impotent monster, vile brood of hell, bow thee before the Name of Him who created thee once, and now annihilates thee, and return to thy forefathers—to the worms of the earth."
Thus speaking, he swung his sharp spear around his head with all his might, and hurled it at the monster. The spear flew hissing over the heads of the priests, and there, where the beating of the heart was visible on the left side of the monster, beneath its hard, scaly skin, the spear penetrated, and remained quivering in its heart.
Triton fell down upon his face with a frightful roar, vomiting forth streams of black blood from his gaping jaws, shaking the earth beneath the lashing of his tail, and tearing up the stones all around with his claws.
Bar Noemi and his comrades fled before the crowd had time to recover from its consternation; and when the men of Triton's city at last bethought themselves of pursuing the deicides, the ground burst asunder, so that a broad gulf lay between the pursuers and the pursued, and a stifling, infernal smoke rose up from the abyss.
The five men reached their home among the glaciers in safety. A great joy awaited Bar Noemi on the day of his return. His wife bare him a son, who equally resembled its father and its mother. And this befell to the great consolation of the dwellers among the glaciers; for it was as if Heaven had told them that the spot where an innocent babe was born, on this awful day, had nothing to fear from God's wrath.
The eldest of the elders received from Bar Noemi's lips an account of the events, and of the marvels which had taken place in the plains below. Amongst the eleven glaciers, absolutely nothing of all this could be discerned. Here warm summer, bright days, pure air prevailed; the meadows were green, the brooks murmured merrily; here, from the gnat buzzing in the air to the ox lowing in the stall, everything lived and rejoiced to live, and a blessing rested on the trees and grasses.
When the eldest of the elders had heard from Bar Noemi all these evil things, he commanded that every one who dwelt near the valleys should gather together all that he had, and, taking with him his animals, migrate to the uplands and settle there. Heaven would certainly provide for them, and make the dismal snow to melt, and give place to trees and grasses for the nourishment of man and beast.
Three days and three nights did the mortally wounded Triton suffer before he could breathe forth his millennial life in the dust. For three days his fearful roaring could be heard from one mountain-top to the other like incessant thunder, and these ghastly sounds brought forth from their secret lurking-places the Earth's remaining monsters, the hole-inhabiting, subterraneous beasts whose skeletons still excite the wonder of a late posterity. The shuddering earth awoke from her slumber of centuries, and forth they all came, with their misshapen bodies, their gigantic heads, their enormous horns, and their dusky, mail-clad bodies, to terrify the world once more.