A MONSTER MULTITUDE. 257 



head ; her enormous eyes, motionless and prominent, seemed 

 bursting with malignant spleen ; her antlers quivered with 

 rage, and, pointing towards us her blood-extracting weapon, 

 straight and long as the stiletto of Italian bandit, she 

 seemed about to plunge it in our heart ! JVe started to our 

 feet in terror ; and at that instant a sudden gloom, as of coming 

 twilight, overspread the sky, while a flapping as of the canvass 

 of ten thousand vessels proceeded from a winged multitude, 

 monstrous now in bulk as in number, which filled the air. 

 Attempting to escape, we nearly stumbled over not a stone 

 but an enormous beetle (bigger than the biggest turtle ever 

 captured on the shores of the Antilles), and only regained 

 our footing to tread upon the loathsome yielding body of a 

 caterpillar swollen to a serpent's size, and rolling its mutilated 

 length about our ankles. All around, the darkened day -light 

 presented only similar objects, half-revealed : ground, grass, 

 flower, shrub, and tree, all laden or crushed by living masses 

 through which we had, if possible, to force our way in order 

 to gain the shelter of our roof. Armed by desperation, we 

 continued to advance ; and what an advance it was ! Pierced 

 by poisoned arrows, swords, and spears, in the shape of what, 

 as stings, we once despised lacerated by forcep-jaws armed 

 with shark-like teeth bruised by violent contact with the 

 mail-clad limbs of grasshopper Goliahs and beetle Bevis's 

 deafened and bewildered by sounds most strange and threat- 

 ening, and of volume augmented in proportion to their ut- 

 VOL. II. 16. 



