All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness,
and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding
his business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought
it was high time, now or never, before the light was put out,
to break the spell in which I had so long been bound.
But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.
Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it
for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth
at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke.
The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal,
tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out,
I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment
he began feeling me.
Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him
against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be,
to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again.
But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill
comprehended my meaning.
"Who-e debel you?"--he at last said--"you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e."
And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark.
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