bscurity, then very dense, he found it
difficult to see; but it was a human body that lay there, less than ten
paces off, and perfectly motionless!

A sharp pang shot through Benito. His heart, for an instant, ceased to
beat. He thought he was going to lose consciousness. By a supreme effort
he recovered himself. He stepped toward the corpse.

Suddenly a shock as violent as unexpected made his whole frame vibrate!
A long whip seemed to twine round his body, and in spite of the thick
diving-dress he felt himself lashed again and again.

"A gymnotus!" he said.

It was the only word that passed his lips.

In fact, it was a _"puraque,"_ the name given by the Brazilians to the
gymnotus, or electric snake, which had just attacked him.

It is well known that the gymnotus is a kind of eel, with a blackish,
slimy skin, furnished along the back and tail with an apparatus
composed of plates joined by vertical lamellae, and acted on by nerves of
considerable power. This apparatus is endowed with singular electrical
properties, and is apt to produce very formidable results. Some of these
gymnotuses are about the length of a common snake, others are about ten
feet long, while others, which, however, are rare, even reach fifteen or
twenty feet, and are from eight to ten inches in diameter.

Gymnotuses are plentiful enough both in the Amazon and its tributaries;
and it was one of these living coils, about ten feet long, which, after
uncurving itself like a bow, again attacked the diver.

Benito knew what he had to fear from this formidable animal. His clothes
were powerless to protect him. The discharges of the gymnotus, at first
somewhat weak, become more and more violent, and there would come a time
when, exhausted by the shocks, he would be rendered powerless.

Benito, unable to resist the blows, half-dropped upon the sand. His
limbs were becoming paralyzed little by little under the electric
influences of the gymnotus, which lightly touched his body as it wrapped
him in its folds. His arms even he could not lift, and soon his spear
escaped him, and his hand had not strength enough left to pull the cord
and give the signal.

Benito felt that he was lost. Neither Manoel nor his companions could
suspect the horrible combat which was going on beneath them between the
formidable puraque and the unhappy diver, who only fought to suffer,
without any power of defending himself.

And that at the moment when a body--the body of T