eir
torches. Scarcely was he in the hall when my tutor's glittering eyes
seemed to look for something. He caught sight of the negress, and
without a word having passed between them, the poor woman began to
cry:

"No! no! I don't want to!"

"And I wish it," replied the doctor in a hard tone.

One would have said that the negress had been seized by an invincible
power. She shuddered from head to foot, and Christian Weber showing
her a bench, she sat down with a corpse-like stiffness.

All the bystanders, witnesses of this shocking spectacle, good folk
with primitive and crude manners, but full of pious sentiments, made
the sign of the cross, and I who knew not then, even by name, of the
terrible magnetic power of the will, began to tremble, believing that
Agatha was dead.

Christian Weber approached the negress, and making a rapid pass over
her forehead:

"Are you there?" said he.

"Yes, master."

"Sir Thomas Hawerburch?"

At these words she shuddered again.

"Do you see him?"

"Yes--yes," she gasped in a strangling voice, "I see him."

"Where is he?"

"Up there--in the back of the cavern--dead!"

"Dead!" said the doctor, "how?"

"The spider--Oh! the spider crab--Oh!--"

"Control your agitation," said the doctor, who was quite pale, "tell
us plainly--"

"The spider crab holds him by the throat--he is there--at the
back--under the rock--wound round by webs--Ah!"

Christian Weber cast a cold glance toward his assistants, who,
crowding around, with their eyes sticking out of their heads, were
listening intently, and I heard him murmur:

"It's horrible! horrible!"

Then he resumed:

"You see him?"

"I see him--"

"And the spider--is it big?"

"Oh, master, never--never have I seen such a large one--not even on
the banks of the Mocaris--nor in the lowlands of Konanama. It is as
large as my head--!"

There was a long silence. All the assistants looked at each other,
their faces livid, their hair standing up. Christian Weber alone
seemed calm; having passed his hand several times over the negress's
forehead, he continued:

"Agatha, tell us how death befell Sir Hawerburch."

"He was bathing in the basin of the spring--the spider saw him from
behind, with his bare back. It was hungry, it had fasted for a long
time; it saw him with his arms on the water. Suddenly it came out like
a flash and placed its fangs around the commodore's neck, and he cried
out: 'Oh! oh! my God!' It stung and fled. S