“Aha!” I exclaimed, “you are beginning to understand what is going to happen.  Yes, let me get you into that corner, and your doom is sealed!”

And undoubtedly, when he had got to the spot where the ledge came to an end, Azazel seemed puzzled to know what to do next.  I edged up to him closer and closer, full of a noble excitement, and laughing in anticipation at the coming descent and the splash in the torrent below.

I now beheld him at four paces from me, and I was grasping tightly a root of holly that was growing out of a rock to launch out a kick at the devoted beast.

“Look, Elias, see the accursed!” I cried.

When, all in a moment, I felt in my stomach a most awful blow, a butt which would have sent me into the Holderloch had I not kept hold of that blessed root of holly.  The fact was that that miserable goat, seeing himself driven into a corner, had himself commenced the attack.

Oh, what was my astonishment!  Before I knew where I was or what had happened, there was the brute standing up again on his hind-legs, and his horns digging into my stomach and my sides with a hollow sound.

What a position to be in!  It is impossible to be more astounded than I was at that moment!  It was the world upside down.  It was a bad dream—­a nightmare!  The precipice with all its jagged peaks seemed to dance around me, and so did the trees and sky above.  At the same moment I heard piercing cries from Elias of “Help! help!” while Azazel’s horns were ploughing up my sides.

Then I lost all presence of mind.  The goat with his long beard and his hard, sharp horns pounding me, now in my chest, now in my stomach, and then in my shaking limbs, produced a most diabolical effect upon me.  My hold on the root slowly relaxed, and I let go.  But happily something kept me from falling, something which I could not understand at first.  But it was the shepherd Yeri, of the Holderloch, who from the next platform above had caught me by the coat-collar with his crook.

Thanks to his assistance, instead of falling down into the chasm I lay full length along the ledge, and that awful goat walked over my body to get away about his business.

“Come, take firm hold of my crook,” cried the shepherd to Elias; “now I will go down for him.  Don’t let go!”

“You may rely upon me,” answered Elias.

I heard all that as if it were a nightmare.  I had almost lost consciousness.

When I opened my eyes I saw standing before me that gigantic shepherd, with his grey eyes sunk underneath his bushy eyebrows, his yellow beard, a sheepskin thrown over his shoulders, and I thought I had awoke in the age of Oedipus, which made me wonder a good deal.

“Well,” cried the shepherd, in a harsh guttural, “this will teach you not to curse my goat any more!”

Then I saw Azazel rubbing himself comfortably against his master’s colossal legs, and looking slily, and I thought ironically, at me; and then I saw Elias standing behind me, and making the greatest efforts not to laugh.