trying to climb up the rough face of
the wall, slipped and dropped on to the Commandant's chair, slid to the
floor and glided across the verandah and down into the garden before
anyone could find a stick with which to attack it.

Major Hunt, his sallow face a little paler than usual, looked up at the
wall to see if any more reptiles were likely to follow, then sat down
again calmly.

"Thank you, Wargrave," he said quietly. "But for you that brute would
have got me. And his bite is death. Ranga's full of snakes, like all
these places in the hills. We've killed several in the Mess since I've
been here; but no one's had such a close shave as this. I'll stand you a
drink for that. Hi, boy!"

But for all this quiet manner of taking it Frank had made a staunch
friend that night by his prompt action.

As Burke took the filled glass that the Gurkha mess-servant brought him
at the Major's order he said:

"I hate snakes worse than the Divil hates holy wather. They're the only
things in life I'm afraid av. I never go to bed without looking under
the pillow nor put on my boots in the morning without first turning them
up and shaking them. I wish St. Pathrick had made a trip to India and
dhriven the sarpints out av the counthry the same as he did in
Ireland."

"We've the worst snake in the world, I believe, here in the Terai,
Wargrave," said Major Hunt. "Look out for it when you're in the jungle.
It's the hamadryad or king-cobra. Have you heard of it?"

"I saw the skin of one sixteen feet long in a Bombay museum, sir,"
replied the subaltern.

"It's the only snake in Asia that will attack human beings unprovoked;
it's deadly poisonous, unlike all other big snakes, and they say it
moves so fast that it can overtake a man on a pony. Benson, the Forest
Officer of the district, tells me there are many of them in the jungles
here."

"One av the divils chased Dermot's elephant once and turned on the
Colonel when he interfered. It got its head blown off for its pains,"
put in the doctor.

"Don't tell me any more, Burke," exclaimed Wargrave laughing, "or I
won't be able to sleep to-night."

He pushed back his chair as the Commandant rose from the table and,
saying goodnight to the two junior officers, picked up from the verandah
and lit a hurricane lantern and walked down the Mess steps with it on
his way home to his bungalow. Europeans in India do not care to move
about at night without a lamp lest in the darkness they might