violent effort—
“Bulger!” I whispered.
Poor dog, he slept at my feet.
I struggled to escape the spell for one brief moment, that I might stoop to give my faithful friend a farewell caress.
Hist!
The Slow Mover spoke.
“Son!”
I was saved!
He had aught to say to me.
The spell was broken.
My heart began to beat again; the warm blood ran tingling through my veins.
It was a narrow escape.
Already my finger tips had cooled.
Another moment and I would have joined the throng of Slow Movers, and become a brother to the marble dwellers on the Sculptors’ Isle.
All that night the aged Slow Mover talked to me. And when the sun went up I knew all. I knew the secret which had so darkened his placid countenance. I knew the cave in which dwelt the hermit of the Sculptors’ Isle—an outcast, a prisoner, shut in between the narrow walls of a cavern by the sea, for no fault of his, for no sin, for no wrong.
Nature had so willed it.
Why, the aged Slow Mover knew not.
Antonius was the name which the hermit bore.
When morning came I sought him out.
I found him seated by his cavern’s portal, looking out upon the glory of the eastern sky.
This was the secret of his exile:
Some cruel fate had, in his youth, visited him with a dread disease, not unlike that which is known as St. Vitus’ dance. When the fit was upon him, not only did he lose all control over his limbs, so that his feet bore him whither he willed not to go, and that, too, with extreme rapidity, but his arms likewise executed the most rapid and vigorous gestures, now in apparent anger, now entreaty, now wonder. You will readily understand why ill-fated Antonius came to be banished from the midst of the Slow Movers.
Although their brother, and deeply beloved of them, his lightning-like rapidity of motion, his violent gestures, his almost ceaseless change of attitude, not only offended the Slow Movers, it dazed them; it shocked them; it checked the sluggish flow of life blood within their veins, and threatened them all with slow but certain death.
He must go!
He did!
Antonius was banished to the cavern by the sea, where never came sound, save the ocean’s roar when lashed by the demons of the gale, or its sad murmur and ceaseless break and splash in its moments of slumber and rest.
But, most terrible of all the manifestations of the unfortunate Antonius’ fearful ailment was the utterly wild and ungovernable rapidity of his speech.
Like maddened steeds, tongue and lips rushed along!
To the eyes and ears of the Slow Movers, such a violently expressive face, such mad rapidity of utterance, were death itself!
Not one brief month would have found a living statue in that home of flinty hearts, had Antonius not gone!
Antonius was thankful for that dread decree, which housed him forever in the cavern by the sea!
He saw the sufferings of his people, and though his eyes in that brief time wept more tears than all his brethren ever had shed in their sluggish lives, yet were they but a poor proof of the awful grief he felt.
Antonius turned towards me as I approached the spot where he sat wrapped in deep meditation. A sad, but withal kindly smile flitted about his lips, like the quick but faint glimmer of the lightning in the distant sky.
He rose.
I paused to await his bidding to approach him.
He spake not a word, but stretched out his hand.
I bounded forward to clasp it and press it to my lips.
At that instant the fit fell on him.
I could see the look of pain which flashed across his face.
Away he glided, now backward, now forward, now sidewise, now obliquely, his hand outstretched in a desperate effort to reach me, who, with equal desperation, advanced and retreated in a mad endeavor to grasp what constantly eluded me.
Bulger utterly unable to comprehend this wild dance among the rocks of that cavernous shore, followed my heels barking furiously.
I could take no time to quiet him.
Away, away, sped Antonius with redoubled speed, his right hand extended toward me as if with a pitiful prayer to grasp it and thus end the fit which was shaking his limbs so furiously.
Pausing to catch my breath, I again pursued the flitting figure with a determination to overtake it or perish in the attempt.
At last it seemed to circle in smaller and ever smaller rings.
Now was my time!
I sprang upon that whirling form, with a sort of mad desperation, to seize and hold its outstretched hand.
At length I held it.
But no!
His body had come to a rest, but now high over my head, now at my feet, now flashing up one side, now down the other, now whizzing in front of my eyes, now encircling my head like a bird in swift flight that hand went on, ever on, in its wild and mysterious course!
My strength was failing me!
Shall I ever be able to grasp it!
Antonius, too, showed signs of yielding to the awful power of the dread disease which tormented him!
His face took on a strange pallor! His breast heaved convulsively. With one last despairing effort I succeeded in catching his hand in its flight around my head!
I clung to it with desperate vigor!
My touch dispelled the venom from his veins.
He seemed to awake as from some awful dream. He passed his hand across his eyes.
He smiled.
Still clinging to his hand, I gently forced him to be seated upon a rocky bench, over which the ocean had woven a velvety covering of sea-grass and weeds.
“Antonius!” I cried, “peace come upon thee! Forget thy suffering. Be as thou once wert! My touch can give thee rest at least for a brief respite!”
He pressed my hand. A deep sigh lifted his breast. It was the last gasp of the demon which oppressed him.
He was now at rest.
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