slack rope higher than the limb to which he was
attached. Here the rope tautened with a jerk, arresting his flight, and
back he swung in a breathless curve to the other end of his arc. The ram
had fallen, a heap of indistinguishable legs, wool and horns, but
pulling itself together and dodging as its antagonist swept downward it
retired at random, alternately shaking its head and stamping its
fore-feet. When it had backed about the same distance as that from which
it had delivered the assault it paused again, bowed its head as if in
prayer for victory and again shot forward, dimly visible as before--a
prolonging white streak with monstrous undulations, ending with a sharp
ascension. Its course this time was at a right angle to its former one,
and its impatience so great that it struck the enemy before he had
nearly reached the lowest point of his arc. In consequence he went
flying round and round in a horizontal circle whose radius was about
equal to half the length of the rope, which I forgot to say was nearly
twenty feet long. His shrieks, _crescendo_ in approach and _diminuendo_
in recession, made the rapidity of his revolution more obvious to the
ear than to the eye. He had evidently not yet been struck in a vital
spot. His posture in the sack and the distance from the ground at which
he hung compelled the ram to operate upon his lower extremities and the
end of his back. Like a plant that has struck its root into some
poisonous mineral, my poor uncle was dying slowly upward.

"After delivering its second blow the ram had not again retired. The
fever of battle burned hot in its heart; its brain was intoxicated with
the wine of strife. Like a pugilist who in his rage forgets his skill
and fights ineffectively at half-arm's length, the angry beast
endeavored to reach its fleeting foe by awkward vertical leaps as he
passed overhead, sometimes, indeed, succeeding in striking him feebly,
but more frequently overthrown by its own misguided eagerness. But as
the impetus was exhausted and the man's circles narrowed in scope and
diminished in speed, bringing him nearer to the ground, these tactics
produced better results, eliciting a superior quality of screams, which
I greatly enjoyed.

"Suddenly, as if the bugles had sung truce, the ram suspended
hostilities and walked away, thoughtfully wrinkling and smoothing its
great aquiline nose, and occasionally cropping a bunch of grass and
slowly munching it. It seemed to have t