Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 21, 1896 - Miscellanies, Volume IV

CRITICISMS
advanced, his tail writhing in the air, his foot ready
for a spring, while Christian stands back a little,
timidly defensive. The third illustrates these mag-
nificent words : ' Then Apollyon straddled quite
over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am
void of fear in this matter : prepare thyself to die ;
for I swear by my infernal den that thou shalt go
no farther : here will I spill thy soul ! And with
that he threw a flaming dart at his breast.' In the
cut he throws a dart with either hand, belching
pointed flames out of his mouth, spreading his broad
vans, and straddling the while across the path, as
only a fiend can straddle who has just sworn by his
infernal den. The defence will not be long against
such vice, such flames, such red-hot nether energy.
And in the fourth cut, to be sure, he has leaped
bodily upon his victim, sped by foot and pinion, and
roaring as he leaps. The fifth shows the climacteric
of the battle ; Christian has reached nimbly out and
got his sword, and dealt that deadly home-thrust,
the fiend still stretched upon him, but ' giving back,
as one that had received his mortal wound.' The
raised head, the bellowing mouth, the paw clapped
upon the sword, the one wing relaxed in agony, all
realise vividly these words of the text. In the sixth
and last, the trivial armed figure of the pilgrim is
seen kneeling with clasped hands on the betrodden
scene of contest and among the shivers of the darts ;
while just at the margin the hinder quarters and
the tail of Apollyon are whisking off, indignant and
discomfited.
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