I do know that you can keep a secretary-bird away from snakes till
it grows old, but the first reptile it sees it immediately starts out to
beat him up. I had the inherited hate that makes the secretary-bird rush
madly at a snake that may be the first of its species that it has ever
seen, and I guess that Leith had no love to spare for me from the moment
he took my hand.
He was a huge brute, fully six feet tall, and he was the possessor of
two of the strongest-looking hands I had ever seen. They were claws,
that's what they were. The great fingers were slightly crooked, as if
waiting, like the tentacles of an octopus, for something to get in their
grip. The body was heavy, and, in a manner that I cannot explain, it
made me think of animals that lived and died in long past ages. The big
brute looked so capable of making an inexcusable attack that one's
primitive instincts warned one to keep in a state of readiness for the
onslaught that seemed imminent.
But it was the face that was specially unattractive. It was a sallow,
flat face, and the strange eyes did nothing to lighten it.
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