to repel me with blows on face and breast, and at length rolled
on to her stomach. Then, raising herself on all fours, she,
sobbing, gasping, and cursing in a breath, crawled away like a
bear into a remoter portion of the thicket.

"Beast!" she panted. "Oh, you devil!"

Yet, even as the words escaped her lips, her arms gave way beneath
her, and she collapsed upon her face, with legs stretched out,
and her lips emitting a fresh series of convulsive moans.

Excited now to fever pitch, I hurriedly recalled my small store
of knowledge of such cases and finally decided to turn her on
her back, and, as before, to strive to bend her knees upwards in
the direction of her body. Already signs of imminent parturition
were not wanting.

"Lie still," I said, "and if you do that it will not be long
before you are delivered of the child."

Whereafter, running down to the sea, I pulled up my sleeves,
and, on returning, embarked upon my role, of accoucheur.

Scoring the earth with her fingers, uprooting tufts of withered
grass, and struggling to thrust them into her mouth, scattering
soil over her terrible, inhuman face and bloodshot eyes, the
woman writhed like a strip of birch bark in a wood fire. Indeed,
by this time a little head was coming into view, and it needed
all my efforts to quell the twitchings of her legs, to help the
child to issue, and to prevent its mother from thrusting grass