I touched a coil of rope, a rude oar-blade so broad as to seem unwieldy, a tightly rolled cloth,--and then my groping fingers rested on the oddest-feeling thing that ever a startled man touched in the dark.

It was God's mercy I did not cry out from the sudden nervous fit that seized me.

The thing I touched had a round, smooth, creepy feeling of flesh about it, so that I believed I fingered a corpse; until it began to turn slowly under my hand like a huge ball, the loose skin of it twitching yet revealing no human features to my touch.

Saint Andrew! but it frightened me! I knew not what species of strange animal it might prove to be, nor whence its grip or sting might come.

Yet the odd feeling of it was strangely fascinating,--I could not let it go; the damp flesh-like skin seemed to cling to my fingers in a horrible sort of magnetism that bound me prisoner, the cold perspiration of terror bursting from every pore, even as my other hand, trembling and unnerved, sought in my shirt for the knife of Little Sauk.
As I gripped the weapon, the thing began to straighten out, coming up in the quick odd jerks with which some snakes uncoil their joints after the torpidity of winter.