THE SERPENT’S STRANGENESS 157 
out to seek for them, since for every one equalling 
these in lustre he will burden himself with many a 
bushel of common pebbles. 
Lockwood called to mind the mystic wheels in 
Ezekiel’s splendid imaginings—“for the spirit of 
the living creature was in the wheels.” His lissom 
beautiful captive might also have been likened to 
Shelle~’s dream-serpent in the Witch of Atlas— 
In the flame 
Of its own volumes intervolved. 
He had abundant reason to admire the creature’s 
intricate and delicate movements when it appeared 
like “ gossamer incarnate,” after having witnessed 
its motions of another kind, and its deadly power. 
He had seen it lying extended, apparently asleep, 
on the floor of its box, when a rat, which had been 
placed with it, ran over it, but not quite over it, 
for, quick as lightning, it had wound itself round 
the rat’s body, coil over coil, like hand grasping 
hand in squeezing a lemon, until the bones of the 
constricted animal cracked audibly; then it was 
dropped, dead and crushed and limp, on to the 
floor; and the serpent, having revenged the 
indignity, resumed its interrupted repose. With 
this lightning-like deadly quickness of motion and 
the melting mazy evolutions at the other times, 
he also contrasted its statue-like immobility, when, 
with head raised high and projecting forwards, it 
would actually remain for hours at a stretch, its 
brilliant eyes fixed on some object that had alarmed 
it or excited its curiosity. 
