He had a momentary sensation of falling through unreverberate space, and then he was lifted up, and left with legs dangling in mid-air. He was lifted up between the trees, which closed in upon him, and then retreated, and at one moment he expected to be crushed to death and at the next he found himself alone in the center of a great pit, made by the regrouping of the trees, yards and yards from him.
Then the trees and vegetation about him began to glow with a fierce and shocking red light. The trees seemed afire, and red light streamed in rivers from their branches. He found himself suspended in a flaming forest, and at his feet little forest streamlets ran with a soft, welcome murmur. He kicked out with his arms and legs, and then he began to feel the heat, and to suffer from the ascending spirals of smoke, and he longed for the soft touch of his daughter, and her cool, comforting words.
Then he saw it!
Terribly through the forest aisle it came, its huge batlike head thrust forward, and its small eyes glittering with unspeakable malice. Straight toward Mpatanasi it came, and its great, loathsome body swayed in the night wind and its fur turned crimson in the glare of the burning trees.
It was a caricature of evil such as Aubrey Beardsley could not have conceived. It would have been beyond the imagination of Rops, or of John Martin, or of Goya. It was a flaming, flying sadism, with tooth and talon to tear and to rend, and a hatred and blasphemy in its eyes such as none could look upon with cool vision and sane sense. It was Satan seen through the eyes of Baudelaire, or one of those terrible creatures described by Sir John Mandeville, which inhabit unexplored regions of Asia beyond the River Ganges.
For a moment it circled high up, above Mpatanasi's head, and then it began to flutter about him, reaching out with its hideous black beak. The top of its head was manlike, but black and hairless, and its small eyes were sunken, and it had the nose of a bat. A thin, chirping sound came from between its swollen lips. From the center of its furry breast two long appendages hung down, and they ended in black, lobster-shaped claws, which dragged ruthlessly across the forest floor.
To the unsophisticated eyes of Mpatanasi it represented the accumulated evil of generations upon generations of human beings who had lived and died and made no absolution. It was the malice of the ancient forest united to the sins of multitudes, and he knew intuitively that he had offended it, and called it forth, and that it demanded a victim.
When Mpatanasi fully apprehended his infinite peril he deliberately assumed an attitude of nervous defiance. He threw back his head, and stared into the grim, malevolent eyes of the thing his wilfulness had called forth.
For a moment the creature hesitated, and the flames from above and below enveloped it, and passed over it and through it. It opened its mouth, and emitted a thin stream of noisome yellow gas. Then it spat—deliberately spat at him. He could smell its acrid breath, and a mephitic odor of corruption, an offensive, filthy and indescribable smell assailed him and made him choke and cough.
The horrid nausea passed, and Mpatanasi felt a momentary exaltation. The creature had infused a queer assurance into him by its proximity. It was wrapped now in a ball of red and blue flame, and it chirped loudly as it backed away. It commenced circling about again. The trees were closing up, shutting it off. It descended suddenly to within three
(Continued on page 479)
