When the fire was the height of a warrior, and queer things were
happening to this side and to that side, Count Manuel spoke the ordered
words: and of a sudden the flames' colors were altered, so that green
shimmerings showed in the fire, as though salt were burning there.
Manuel waited. This greenness shifted and writhed and increased in the
heart of the fire, and out of the fire oozed a green serpent, the body
of which was well--nigh as thick as a man's body.
This portent came toward Count Manuel horribly. He, who was familiar
with serpents, now grasped this monster's throat, and to the touch its
scales were like very cold glass.
The great snake shifted so resistlessly that Manuel was forced back
toward the fire and toward a doom more dreadful than burning: and the
firelight was in the snake's contemptuous wise eyes. Manuel was of
stalwart person, but his strength availed him nothing until he began to
recite aloud, as Helmas had directed, the multiplication tables: Freydis
could not withstand mathematics.
So when Manuel had come to two times eleven the tall fire guttered as
though it bended under the passing of a strong wind: then the flames
burned high, and Manuel could see that he was grasping the throat of a
monstrous pig.
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