geography of
the room well enough to whirl him up and bring his head down upon the
hardest part of the table."

Sellon stared at the speaker, then at the hideous, writhing body of the
reptile, without a word. He seemed stupefied.

"Scott!" he burst forth at last. "Well, we are quits now, at any rate.
But that's something like a nightmare."

This, then, was the interpretation of his bloodcurdling dream. The
terrible eyes, the frightful riveting spell, the shrill hiss, the
poisoned arrow. He felt clean knocked out of time.

"Green cobra--and a big un at that," said Renshaw, throwing the carcase
through the open house-door. "See how it was? The beggar knew a big
rain was coming, and sneaked in here for shelter. It's never altogether
safe to sleep with open doors. And now, unless you can sleep through a
shower-bath, it's not much use turning in again. This old thatch will
leak like a sieve after all these months of dry weather. Better have a
`nip' to steady your nerves."

The storm broke in all its fury; every steel-blue dazzling flash, in
unintermittent sequence, lit up the darkness with more than the
brightness of noonday, while the thunderclaps followed in that series of
staccato crashes so appalling in their deafening suddenness to one
belated in the open during these storms on the High Veldt. Then came a
lull, followed by the onrushing roar of the welcome rain. In less than
five minutes the dry and shrunken thatch was leaking like a shower-bath,
even as its owner had predicted, and having covered up everything worth
so protecting, the two men lit their pipes and sat down philosophically
to wait for the morning.

It came. But although the storm had long since passed on the rain
continued. No mere thunder-shower this, but a steady, drenching
downpour from a lowering and unbroken sky; a downpour to wet a man to
the skin in five minutes. The drought had at length broken up.

Too late, however. The rain, as is frequently the case under the
circumstances, turned out a cold rain. Throughout that day all hands
worked manfully to save the lives of the remnant of the stock--for the
Angora is a frail sort of beast under adverse conditions--and as it grew
bitterly cold, packing the creatures into stables, outhouses, even the
Koranna huts, for warmth. In vain! The wretched animals, enfeebled by
the long, terrible drought, succumbed like flies to the sudden and
inclement change. Save for about two score