The squall, already blowing with full lungs, laid hold of it, and moved it about in all directions.

It became horrible; it began to struggle.  An awful puppet, with a gibbet chain for a string.  Some humorist of night must have seized the string and been playing with the mummy.  It turned and leapt as if it would fain dislocate itself; the birds, frightened, flew off.  It was like an explosion of all those unclean creatures.  Then they returned, and a struggle began.

The dead man seemed possessed with hideous vitality.  The winds raised him as though they meant to carry him away.  He seemed struggling and making efforts to escape, but his iron collar held him back.  The birds adapted themselves to all his movements, retreating, then striking again, scared but desperate.  On one side a strange flight was attempted, on the other the pursuit of a chained man.  The corpse, impelled by every spasm of the wind, had shocks, starts, fits of rage:  it went, it came, it rose, it fell, driving back the scattered swarm.  The dead man was a club, the swarms were dust.  The fierce, assailing flock would not leave their hold, and grew stubborn; the man, as if maddened by the cluster of beaks, redoubled his blind chastisement of space.  It was like the blows of a stone held in a sling.  At times the corpse was covered by talons and wings; then it was free.  There were disappearances of the horde, then sudden furious returns—­a frightful torment continuing after life was past.  The birds seemed frenzied.  The air-holes of hell must surely give passage to such swarms.  Thrusting of claws, thrusting of beaks, croakings, rendings of shreds no longer flesh, creakings of the gibbet, shudderings of the skeleton, jingling of the chain, the voices of the storm and tumult—­what conflict more fearful?  A hobgoblin warring with devils!  A combat with a spectre!

At times the storm redoubling its violence, the hanged man revolved on his own pivot, turning every way at once towards the swarm, as if he wished to run after the birds; his teeth seemed to try and bite them.  The wind was for him, the chain against him.  It was as if black deities were mixing themselves up in the fray.  The hurricane was in the battle.  As the dead man turned himself about, the flock of birds wound round him spirally.  It was a whirl in a whirlwind.  A great roar was heard from below.  It was the sea.

The child saw this nightmare.  Suddenly he trembled in all his limbs; a shiver thrilled his frame; he staggered, tottered, nearly fell, recovered himself, pressed both hands to his forehead, as if he felt his forehead a support; then, haggard, his hair streaming in the wind, descending the hill with long strides, his eyes closed, himself almost a phantom, he took flight, leaving behind that torment in the night.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NORTH POINT OF PORTLAND.

He ran until he was breathless, at random, desperate, over the plain into the snow, into space.  His flight warmed him.  He needed it.  Without the run and the fright he had died.