Yes; he stood gazing on her for a few moments, with eyes that seemed to devour her:--then, in obedience to the impulse of maddening desire, he rushed upon her, and in an instant wrenched the sword from her grasp. But rapid as lightning, Nisida bounded away from him, ere he could wind his arms around her; and fleet as the startled deer, she hastened toward the groves. Stephano, still retaining the sword in his hand, pursued her with a celerity which was sustained by his desire to possess her and by his rage that she had escaped him. But the race was unequal as that of a lion in chase of a roe; for Nisida seemed borne along as it were upon the very air. Leaving the groves on her left she dashed into the vale. Along the sunny bank of the limpid stream she sped;--on, on toward a forest that bounded the valley at the further end, and rose amphitheatrically up toward the regions of the mountains! Stephano Verrina still pursued her, though losing ground rapidly; but still he maintained the chase. And now the verge of the forest is nearly gained; and in its mazes Nisida hopes to be enabled to conceal herself from the ruffian whom, by a glance hastily cast behind from time to time, she ascertains to be upon her track. But, oh! whither art thou flying thus wildly, beauteous Nisida?--into what appalling perils art thou rushing, as it were, blindly? For there, in the tallest tree on the verge of the forest to which thou now art near,--there, amidst the bending boughs and the quivering foliage--one of the hideous serpents which infest the higher region of the isle is disporting--the terrible anaconda--the monstrous boa, whose dreadful coils, if wound round that fair form of thine, would crush it into a loathsome mass! CHAPTER XLII. THE TEMPTATION--THE ANACONDA. In the meantime Fernand Wagner was engaged in the attempt to cross the chain of mountains which intersected the island whereon the shipwreck had thrown him. He had clambered over rugged rocks and leapt across many yawning chasms in that region of desolation,--a region which formed so remarkable a contrast with the delicious scenery which he had left behind him. And now he reached the base of a conical hill, the summit of which seemed to have been split into two parts: and the sinuous tracks of the lava-streams, now cold, and hard, and black, adown its sides, convinced him that this was the volcano, from whose rent crater had poured the bituminous fluid so fatal to the vegetation of that region.