name, uttered in pleading tones exceedingly grateful to my ear.
Evidently the man had not the faintest notion of what was being done to
him, and was inexpressibly terrified. When Death comes cloaked in
mystery he is terrible indeed. Little by little my uncle's oscillations
diminished, and finally he hung motionless. I went to him and was about
to give him the _coup de grâce_, when I heard and felt a succession of
smart shocks which shook the ground like a series of light earthquakes,
and turning in the direction of the ram, saw a long cloud of dust
approaching me with inconceivable rapidity and alarming effect! At a
distance of some thirty yards away it stopped short, and from the near
end of it rose into the air what I at first thought a great white bird.
Its ascent was so smooth and easy and regular that I could not realize
its extraordinary celerity, and was lost in admiration of its grace. To
this day the impression remains that it was a slow, deliberate movement,
the ram--for it was that animal--being upborne by some power other than
its own impetus, and supported through the successive stages of its
flight with infinite tenderness and care. My eyes followed its progress
through the air with unspeakable pleasure, all the greater by contrast
with my former terror of its approach by land. Onward and upward the
noble animal sailed, its head bent down almost between its knees, its
fore-feet thrown back, its hinder legs trailing to rear like the legs of
a soaring heron.

"At a height of forty or fifty feet, as fond recollection presents it to
view, it attained its zenith and appeared to remain an instant
stationary; then, tilting suddenly forward without altering the relative
position of its parts, it shot downward on a steeper and steeper course
with augmenting velocity, passed immediately above me with a noise like
the rush of a cannon shot and struck my poor uncle almost squarely on
the top of the head! So frightful was the impact that not only the man's