I had fancied myself with my automatic
making a rather pretty picture as a young Amazon--but I had now a
dreadful fear that my revolver might spasmodically go off and wound
the Thing, and then even if it had meditated letting me go it would
certainly attack me. Nevertheless I clung to my revolver as to my
last hope.
I began to edge away crab-wise into the wood. Like a metronome I
said to myself over and over monotonously, _don't run, don't run_!
Dim legends about the power of the human eye floated through my
brain. But how quell the creature with my eye when I could not see
it? As for the hopeless expedient of screaming, I hadn't courage
for it. I was silent, as I would fain have been invisible. Only
my dry lips kept muttering soundlessly, _don't run, don't run_!
I did not run. Instead, I stepped on a smooth surface of rock and
slid downhill like a human toboggan until I fetched up against a
dead log. I discovered it to be a dead log after a confused
interval during which I vaguely believed myself to have been
swallowed by an alligator. While the alligator illusion endured I
must have lain comatose and immovable. Indeed, when my senses
began to come back I was still quite inert. I experienced that
curious tranquillity which is said to visit those who are actually
within the jaws of death. There I lay prone, absolutely at the
mercy of the mysterious white prowler of the forest--and I did not
care.
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