suffering. But
gradually I apprehended what was being done. Its captor was squeezing
its throat. I saw what I had never seen before, and have never seen
since, I saw its tongue like a pale pink petal of a flower dart out as
the pressure drove it. Revolting sight as that would have been to me,
witnessed in the world, here, in this dark wood, in this outland
presence, it was nothing but curious. Now, as I watched and wondered,
the being, following my eyes' direction, looked down at the huddled
thing between his thighs, and just as children squeeze a snap-dragon
flower to make it open and shut its mouth, so precisely did he,
pressing or releasing the windpipe, cause that poor beast to throw
back its lips and dart its dry tongue. He did this many times while he
watched it; and when he looked up at me again, and while he continued
to look at me, I saw that his cruel fingers, as by habit, continued
the torture, and that in some way he derived pleasure from the
performance--as if it gratified him to be sure that effect was
following on cause inevitably.

I have never, I believe, been cruel to an animal in my life. I hated
cruelty then as I hate it now. I have always shirked the sight of
anything in pain from my childhood onwards. Yet the fact is that not
only did I nothing to interfere in what I saw going on, but that I
was deeply interested and absorbed in it. I can only explain that to
myself now, by supposing that I knew then, that the creature in front
of me was not of my own kind, and was not, in fact, outraging any law
of its own being. Is not that possible? May I not have collected
unawares so much out of created nature? I am unable to say: all I am
clear about is that here was a thing in the semblance of a boy doing
what I had never observed a boy do, and what if I ever had observed a
boy do, would have flung me into a transport of rage and grief. Here,
therefore, was a thing in the semblance of a boy who was no boy at
all. So much must have been as certain to me then as it is
indisputable now.

One doesn't, at that age, reason things out; one knows them, and is
dumb, though unconvinced, before powerful syllogisms to the contrary.
All children are so, confronted by strange phenomena. And yet I had
facts to go upon if, child as I was, I had been capable of inference.
I need only mention one. If this creature had been human, upon seeing
that I was conscious of its behaviour to the rabbit, it would either
have stopped