ch of those devilish orbs. Alas! it was too late: no step could he
move backwards, no, not to save his life.

Now he must go on. It was as though the Water Dweller had read his mind,
and drew its foe towards itself to put the matter to the test. Otter
took one step forward--rather would he have sprung again off the head of
the colossus--and the eyes glowed more dreadfully than ever, as though
in triumph.

Then in despair he sank to the ground, hiding his face in his hands and
groaning in his heart.

"This is a devil that I have come to fight, a devil with magic in his
eyes," he thought. "And how can I, who am but a common Knobnose dwarf,
do battle against the king of evil spirits, clothed in the shape of a
crocodile?"

Even now, when he could not see them, he felt the eyes drawing him. Yet,
as they were no longer visible, his courage and power of mind came back
to him sufficiently to enable him to think again.

"Otter," he said to himself, "if you stay thus, soon the magic will do
its work. Your sense will leave you, and that devil will eat you up as a
cobra devours a meer-cat. Yes, he will swallow you, and his inside will
be your grave, and that is no end for one who has been called a god!
Men, let alone gods, should die fighting, whether it be with other
men, with wild beasts, with snakes, or with devils. Think now, if your
master, the Deliverer, saw you crouch thus like a toad before an adder,
how he would laugh and say, 'Ho! I thought this man brave. Ho! he talked
very loud about fighting the Water Dweller, he who came of a line of
warriors; but now I laugh at him, for I see that he is but a cross-bred
cur and a coward.'

"Yes, yes, you can hear his words, Otter. Say now, will you bear their
shame and sit here until you are snapped up and swallowed?"

Thus the dwarf addressed himself, and it seemed to his bewildered brain
that the words which he had imagined were true, and that Leonard really
stood by and mocked him.

At last he sprang to his feet, and crying, "Never, Baas!" so loudly that
the cave rang with the echoes of his shout, he rushed straight at the
foe, holding the two-bladed knife in his right hand.

The crocodile, that was waiting for him to fall insensible, as had
ever been the custom of the living victims on whom it fixed its baneful
glare, heard his cry and awoke from its seeming torpor. It lifted its
head, fire seemed to flash from its dull eyes, its vast length began to
stir. Higher and h