tily, and the boulder shifted, poised onward to
settle.

Who struck? Death.

Nerveless, he swayed with the rock, on a motion its own weight
consummated, agape, transfixed by the wonder of living still.

Fresh, horrible pain seized him by foot and ankle, casting him down to
tear up the sand, to bite the sand, lest in agony he should go shrieking
like a woman.

He writhed round to strike in the dark at the senseless mass, in the
madness of terror and pain deeming the boulder itself had moved with
malignant intelligence, not merely according to the preponderate laws
that lift the world. To him the presence of infernal powers was manifest
in this agent. In foul warfare they held him fast by the heel, and mocked
the impotent spirit within the bonds of flesh. The dark grew pregnant
with evil beings as he struggled to swooning.

Pray for us, faithful hearts, pray! In the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, for her service! Then he prevailed, and out of the
teeth of hell he wrenched his heel.

Broken, crippled, strengthless, Christian crawled over the sand to the
spot where he would die. Indistinguishable in the dark was the furrow he
left stained till the tide should come: long before daylight broke the
tide would come up to smooth and whiten it. He knew he was dying, and,
touching the ended rowan, rendered thanks that it was to be there. All
was nearly over, pain and a foolish, arrogant hope on which he had staked
his life: presently, when he was dead, Diadyomene would come, to overstep
his body, eluding there the toils. He misliked the thought that her feet
might go red from treading him, and he stretched about weakly for briny
hollows along the rock to cleanse the hot, slow oozing that chilled and
stiffened into long stripes.

Why should he be gasping still, as breathless as after his hardest race,
as after his mightiest heft? He required breath to help endurance of
thirst and exorbitant pain; air could he gasp in, deep and free, and yet
he wanted for more.

Why he should be dying, and how, Christian did not know. Life's centre
had been stricken mortally quicker than a lightning-flash, too subtly for
the brain to register any pain, so unmistakably he wondered only he was
yet alive. From breath to breath he awaited another touch and a final,
yet nothing lacked for vital order save air, air, more air. At short,
merciful intervals he drifted out of the range of any pain.

On this his third death he did