I set my teeth and stared savagely at the cliff.
"If that is so," said I, "we must leave him here and pull foot."
There was a tense silence, then, as we rose, an infuriated yell burst from the Oneidas, and in their impotence they fired blindly at the cliff, awaking a very hell of echo.
Through the clattering confusion of the double discharge, the demoniac laughter of the Erie rang, and my Oneidas, retreating, hurled back insult and anathema, promising to return and annihilate every living sorcerer in the Dark Empire, including Amochol himself.
"Ha-e!" he shouted after us, giving the evil spirits' cry. "Ha-e! Ha-ee!" From his shelf he cast a painted stick after us, which came hurtling down and landed in the water. And he screamed as he heard us threshing over the shallows: "Koue! Askennon eskatoniot!"
The thing he had cast after us was floating, slowly turning round and round in the water; and it seemed to be a stick something thicker than an arrow and as long, and painted in concentric rings of black, vermillion, and yellow.
Then, as we gave it wide berth, to our astonishment it suddenly crinkled up and was alive, and lifted a tiny, evil head from the water, running out at us a snake's tongue that flickered.
That this was magic my Indians never doubted. They gave the thing one horrified glance, turned, and fairly leaped through the water till the shallow flood roared as though a herd of deer were passing over.
As for me, I ran, too, and felt curiously weak and shaken; though I suspected that this wriggling thing now swimming back to shore was the poison snake of the Ksaurora, and no Antouhonoran witchcraft at all, as I had seen skins of the brilliant and oddly marked little serpent at Guy Park, whither some wandering Southern Tuscaroras had brought them.
But the bestial creature of the cliff had now so inspired us all with loathing that it was as though our very breath was poisoned; and in swift and silent file we pushed forward, as if the very region—land, water, the air itself—had become impure, and we must rid ourselves of the place itself to breathe.