Benito felt that he was lost. Neither Manoel nor his companions could
suspect the horrible combat which was going on beneath them between
the formidable puraque and the unhappy diver, who only fought to
suffer, without any power of defending himself.
And that at the moment when a body--the body of Torres without a
doubt!--had just met his view.
By a supreme instinct of self-preservation Benito uttered a cry. His
voice was lost in the metallic sphere from which not a sound could
escape!
And now the puraque redoubled its attacks; it gave forth shock after
shock, which made Benito writhe on the sand like the sections of a
divided worm, and his muscles were wrenched again and again beneath
the living lash.
Benito thought that all was over; his eyes grew dim, his limbs began
to stiffen.
But before he quite lost his power of sight and reason he became the
witness of a phenomenon, unexpected, inexplicable, and marvelous in
the extreme.
A deadened roar resounded through the liquid depths. It was like a
thunder-clap, the reverberations of which rolled along the river bed,
then violently agitated by the electrical discharges of the gymnotus.
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