“Club! Club! Got--have club!” he panted, hoarsely. And espying one along the edge of the stream, he plunged to secure it. This moment gave the rattlesnake time to get ahead. Wildly Adam rushed back, brandishing the club. His tall gaunt form, bent forward, grew overbalanced as he moved, and he made a long fall, halfway across the stream. He got up and reached the snake in time to prevent it from escaping under some brush. Then he swung the club. It was not easy to hit the snake crawling between stones. And the club was of rotten wood. It broke. With the blunt end Adam managed to give his victim a blow that retarded its progress. Adam let out a hoarse yell. Something burst in him--a consummation of the instinct to kill and the instinct to survive. There was no difference between them. Hot and mad and weak, he staggered after the crippled snake. The chase had transformed the whole internal order of him. He was starving to death, and he smelled the blood of fresh meat. The action infuriated him and the odor maddened him. Not far indeed was he then from the actual seizing of that deadly serpent in his bare hands. But he tripped and fell again in a long forward plunge. It brought him to the sand almost on top of the snake. And here the rattlesnake stopped to coil, scarcely two feet from Adam’s face. Adam tried to rise on his hands. But his strength had left him. And simultaneously there left him the blood madness of that chase to kill and eat. He realized his peril. The rattlesnake would strike him. Adam had one flashing thought of the justice of it--one sight of the strange, cold, deadly jewel eyes, one swift sense of the beauty and magnificent spirit of this reptile of the desert, and then horror possessed him. He froze to his marrow. The icy mace of terror had stunned him. And with it had passed the flashing of his intelligence. He was only a fearful animal, fascinated by another, dreading death by instinct. And as he collapsed, sagging forward, the rattlesnake struck him in the face with the stinging blow of a red-hot iron. Then Adam fainted. CHAPTER XI When Adam recovered consciousness he imagined he was in a dream. But a dragging, throbbing pain in his face seemed actuality enough to discredit any illusions of slumber. It was shady where he lay or else his eyes were dimmed. Presently he made out that he reclined under one of the palm-thatched roofs.