All this
struck her in one, and made a sob of her breath, and she ceased.
Immediately the long red tongue was thrust forth again. Before it
touched, a song sprang to her lips, a wild sea-song, such as some
sailor might be singing far out on trackless blue water that night, the
shrouds whistling with frost and the sheets glued in ice,--a song with
the wind in its burden and the spray in its chorus. The monster raised
his head and flared the fiery eyeballs upon her, then fretted the
imprisoned claws a moment and was quiet; only the breath like the vapor
from some hell-pit still swathed her. Her voice, at first faint and
fearful, gradually lost its quaver, grew under her control and subject
to her modulation; it rose on long swells, it fell in subtile cadences,
now and then its tones pealed out like bells from distant belfries on
fresh sonorous mornings. She sung the song through, and, wondering lest
his name of Indian Devil were not his true name, and if he would not
detect her, she repeated it. Once or twice now, indeed, the beast
stirred uneasily, turned, and made the bough sway at his movement. As
she ended, he snapped his jaws together, and tore away the fettered
member, curling it under him with a snarl,--when she burst into the
gayest reel that ever answered a fiddle-bow.
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