Breaking off a branch from a tree, he began churning it around in the soft earth with feverish excitement. He became possessed, just as when he had won the prize canoe. His emotional power (which no one knew about) gave him strength, and he strove with maniacal effort to get the stick down, pushing it, then working it in a circle. Soon it broke and he secured another, so large that he could hardly handle it. When it became blocked by rock or bits of root he actually cried in nervous excitement and gave vent to his annoyance by screaming. One cannot keep this sort of thing up very long; the nerves give out if the strength does not. Skinny was on the verge of hysteria. But still he strove like a little David with his great unwieldy Goliath of a stick, pushing, twisting, pulling, crying, falling and rising again, and hanging on it to pry open a hole into that stifling tomb below. At last something happened. The stick plunged, Skinny lost his balance and went sprawling into the depression. But he smelled smoke. He had been successful, the long stick had penetrated into the cave. Right beside him a thin column rose and dissolved in the air. He rose, breathing excitedly, and holding a cut knee. But he did not care. He grabbed hold of the stick again, pulling the end of it around in a large circle to enlarge the tiny hole he had made. He tripped, he stumbled, and again cut himself sorely when he went sprawling on a bit of pointed rock. But he was up again, pulling, hauling, wrenching. He was in a state of frenzy, this insignificant, staring little fellow whom they "jollied." He seemed to be fighting the whole universe, wrestling with the elements. Blood was streaming from his cut leg, his face was dripping with sweat, his eyes were wild. Suddenly the ground on which he stood settled, he heard a dim thud, and the stick descended till only a few inches of it remained above surface. Now the smoke came out freely; there was no cave-in, but something had happened. In his small way, Skinny had changed the face of nature. Frantic with joy he brushed the smoke away from his face and tried to haul the stick up. Then he saw something which he could hardly believe; it seemed like magic, and to conjure his whole maniacal striving into a tumultuous dream. As he raised the long stick a snake was coiled loosely about it. Slowly, almost mechanically the drowsy reptile included Skinny's leg in its slow winding. It tightened around the stick and the little thin limb binding them together like things bound around with cord. The action of the snake was not belligerent, it seemed asleep and made the horrible affair seem unreal. Its movement was like the weirdly slow motion pictures sometimes shown so as to reveal detail to the spectators. There was something appalling in its slow, drowsy tightening. CHAPTER XXVI WITH THE SMOKE