Snake and Sword | Page 3

earth as you get
it. Hasten!--and there is baksheesh," said Mrs. de Warrenne quietly in
the vernacular.
Tap and pail were by the door of the back verandah. In a minute the
hamal entered and flung a pail of water on the burning pool of oil,
reducing the mass of blue lambent flames considerably.
"Now hamal," said the fainting woman, the more immediate danger
confronted, "bring another lamp very quickly and put it on the shelf.
Quick! don't stop to fill or to clean it."
Was the pricking, shooting pain the repeated stabbing of the snake's
fangs or was it "pins and needles"? Was this deadly faintness death
indeed, or was it only weakness?
In what seemed but a few more years the man reappeared carrying a
lighted lamp, the which he placed upon a shelf.
"Listen," said Mrs. de Warrenne, "and have no fear, brave Bhil. I have
caught a snake. Get a knife quickly and cut off its head while I hold it."
The man glancing up, appeared to suppose that his mistress held the
snake on the shelf, hurried away, and rushed back with the cook's big
kitchen-knife gripped dagger-wise in his right hand.
"Do you see the snake?" she managed to whisper. "Under my foot!
Quick! It is moving ... moving ... moving out."

With a wild Bhil cry the man flung himself down upon his hereditary
dread foe and slashed with the knife.
Mrs. de Warrenne heard it scratch along the floor, grate on a nail, and
crush through the snake.
"Aré!! Dead, Mem-Sahib!! Dead!! See, I have cut off its head! Aré!!!!
Wah!! The brave mistress!----"
As she collapsed, Mrs. de Warrenne saw the twitching body of a large
cobra with its head severed close to its neck. Its head had just protruded
from under her foot and she had saved the unborn life for which she
had fought so bravely by just keeping still.... She had won her brief
decoration with the Cross by--keeping still. (Her husband had won his
permanent right to it by extreme activity.) ... Had she moved she would
have been struck instantly, for the reptile was, by her, uninjured, merely
nipped between instep and floor.
Having realized this, Lenore de Warrenne fainted and then passed from
fit to fit, and her child--a boy--was born that night. Hundreds of times
during the next few days the same terrible cry rang from the sick-room
through the hushed bungalow: "It is under my foot! It is moving ...
moving ... moving ... out!"
* * * * *
"If I had to make a prophecy concerning this young fella," observed the
broken-hearted Major John Decies, I.M.S., Civil Surgeon of
Bimariabad, as he watched old Nurse Beaton performing the baby's
elaborate ablutions and toilet, "I should say that he will not grow up
fond of snakes--not if there is anything in the 'pre-natal influence'
theory."


PART II.

THE SEARING OF A SOUL.
CHAPTER II.
THE SWORD AND THE SNAKE.
Colonel Matthew Devon De Warrenne, commanding the Queen's Own
(118th) Bombay Lancers, was in good time, in his best review-order
uniform, and in a terrible state of mind.
He strode from end to end of the long verandah of his bungalow with
clank of steel, creak of leather, and groan of travailing soul. As the top
of his scarlet, blue and gold turban touched the lamp that hung a good
seven feet above his spurred heels he swore viciously.
Almost for the first time in his hard-lived, selfish life he had been
thwarted, flouted, cruelly and evilly entreated, and the worst of it was
that his enemy was--not a man whom he could take by the throat,
but--Fate.
Fate had dealt him a cruel blow, and he felt as he would have done had
he, impotent, seen one steal the great charger that champed and pawed
there at the door, and replace it by a potter's donkey. Nay, worse--for he
had loved Lenore, his wife, and Fate had stolen her away and replaced
her by a squealing brat.
Within a year of his marriage his wife was dead and buried, and his son
alive and--howling. He could hear him (curse him!).
The Colonel glanced at his watch, producing it from some mysterious
recess beneath his belted golden sash and within his pale blue tunic.
Not yet time to ride to the regimental parade-ground and lead his
famous corps to its place on the brigade parade-ground for the New
Year Review and march-past.
As he held the watch at the length of its chain and stared,
half-comprehending, his hand--the hand of the finest swordsman in the

Indian Army--shook.
Lenore gone: a puling, yelping whelp in her place.... A tall,
severe-looking elderly woman entered the verandah by a distant door
and approached the savage, miserable soldier.