|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 45
"But, for a man like Peters, such a contest was scarcely a risk. Had
Ahpilus been less savage in his baffled rage, Peters would have spared
the madman; but it was not to be. There was scarcely a man in all
Hili-li that could physically cope with Ahpilus; but he was no match for
Peters. For a few moments the sailor protected himself without any act
of aggression; but it soon became apparent that he would be obliged to
destroy his adversary, or himself be destroyed. Ahpilus had pushed
Peters, or Peters had carelessly allowed himself to shift his own
position, to within dangerously close proximity to the chasm, and at the
moment when Peters noticed this circumstance, he also saw that he was
between Ahpilus and the abyss: and Ahpilus, in all his furious madness,
also observed his advantage. Peters had in his possession a very long
and keen knife, but, as he afterward said in talking over this incident,
he had never yet seen the time when he was compelled to use an
artificial weapon in an encounter with a single combatant; and
particularly would he never have used a knife, even though his adversary
were a maniac, if a maniac without an artificial weapon. Peters saw that
Diregus had found Pym, and, as was also the boatman, he and Pym were, of
course, viewing the struggle. I should not, however, have included Pym
in the party of observers; for he knew too well how the combat would end
to be much absorbed in it. He had no eyes for anything but Lilama.--But
to return: As Ahpilus saw his advantage, by a supreme effort he summoned
all his great muscular strength, and aided by that invincible motor, the
will of a madman, he endeavored to force Peters over the brink. At that
precise moment the sailor had his right hand closed on the top of
Ahpilus's left shoulder, and his left hand just beneath Ahpilus's right
arm on the side of the exile's chest. He quickly shifted his left hand
to the side of the hip; and then those great gorilla arms raised from
the ground the body of the madman, swung it overhead as another man
might swing the body of a three-year-old child, as he did so bringing
the back of his adversary downward; and then came a movement of
Herculean power in which the long arms approximated with a twisting,
bending effect; two vertebras in Ahpilus's back at the point of least
resistance separated, the spine was dislocated, and a mass of helpless,
vibrating human flesh fell at the feet of the victor. Peters, whilst his
brute instinct was in full possession of him, might, instead of dropping
Ahpilus to the ground, have thrown the body into the abyss; but Diregus
had anticipated such an action, and called to Peters not to injure the
poor insane fellow more than was necessary to prevent him from injuring
others. Ahpilus was not dead--that is, he was not dead over his entire
body: the hips and all below were as nerveless as the body of a corpse;
but above the hips, the same old vigor remained--and so it would be
though he lived for yet a hundred years."
Here Doctor Bainbridge ceased to speak. Doctor Castleton had entered the
room two or three minutes before, and, keeping silent, had heard the
last three or four hundred words, which described the close of that
brief but terrible combat.
The FIFTEENTH Chapter
"Well," said Doctor Castleton, as Bainbridge closed. "Peters could, when
he was fifty years younger, have done that very thing to any living man
weighing not more than a hundred and eighty or a hundred and ninety
pounds. I myself have seen him throw to the ground a powerful horse, and
the little giant must have been older than sixty at the time. Then
again, he possesses that wonderful instinct of certainty in action which
belongs to purely animal life. It is said that the tiger when it strikes
never misses its aim; and that our American panther makes the most
unusual leaps without ever making an attempt beyond its powers. I have
many times observed that even our comparatively degenerate domestic cat
very rarely indeed, if ever, fails to accomplish the purpose of a
stroke. Peters possesses, or did possess, that instinct."
"Yes," said Bainbridge, "you are right. Peters says that on almost every
vessel he ever shipped on he was called 'the baboon'--because of his
great physical power and agility, he says; but as we know, rather
because of his extremely short stature, his large mouth--in fact, his
resemblance in many striking ways to the gorilla, or the orang-outang;
and perhaps, also, in part, to his habit, mentioned in Pym's description
of him, of feigning mental aberration--assuming to be 'simple.'"
"This won't do," said Castleton, with that peculiar look on his face
which always appeared when he was about to deflect from the serious to
the humorous. "Whilst I should not object to hearing my old friend
Peters called a gorilla, I draw the line at gorilla. I should object to
the appellation orang-outang, and I should resent with emphasis that of
baboon. But gorilla I will accept, for in many ways the gorilla is, or
at least once was, the superior of man. Even if we limit the source of
our deductions to the skeleton of the animal, the truth of my last
assertion is strongly evidenced. In the first place, the gorilla is more
sedate and less pettily curious than man; this is proved by his having
only three, instead of four, bones in the last division of his spine,
giving him a shorter caudal appendage than man's, and proving the animal
to be farther from the monkey than are we; then in the second place, the
gorilla has thirteen ribs, which would seem to be rational evidence
that, whatever the present gorilla may be, his ancestors of by-gone ages
were handsomer than man; because in the gorilla's first search for a
wife the field of operations was not limited to his own chest."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|