THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 159 



the task of looking it down. It was a foolish effort. The 

 bronze head and sinewy neck, about which the water 

 flowed without a ripple, were as if carved in stone, and the 

 cruel unwinking eyes, with the light coming and going in 

 them, appeared to glow the brighter the longer I looked. 

 Gradually there came over me a sensation of sickening 

 fear, which, if I had yielded to it, would have left me 

 powerless to move ; but with a cry I leapt up, and, seizing 

 a fallen willow branch, attacked the reptile with a species 

 of fury. . . . Probably the idea of the Icanti originated in 

 a similar experience of some native. 



The Icanti, it must be explained, is a powerful 

 and malignant being that takes the form of a great 

 serpent, and lies at night in some deep dark pool ; 

 and should a man incautiously approach and look 

 down into the water he would be held there by the 

 power of the great gleaming eyes, and finally drawn 

 down against his will, powerless and speechless, to 

 disappear for ever in the black depths. 



Not less strange than this statue-like immobility 

 of the serpent, the effect of which is increased and 

 made more mysterious by the flickering lambent 

 tongue, suddenly appearing at intervals like light- 

 ning playing on the edge of an unmoving cloud, is 

 that kind of progressive motion so even and slow 

 as to be scarcely perceptible. But on this and 

 other points relating to the serpent's strangeness I 

 have spoken in the preceding chapter. Even in 

 our conditions of self-absorption and aloofness — 

 the mental habit of regarding nature as something 

 outside of ourselves and interesting only to men 

 of curious minds — this quality of the serpent is 

 yet able to affect us powerfully. How great was 



