“Well, no, I could hardly think that,” answered Lyn, looking up quickly.
“Yet I believe you thought something akin to it,” he rejoined, with a curious smile. “Listen now, and I’ll tell you if you care to hear—only don’t let the story go any further. By the way, you are only the second I have ever told it to.”
“I feel duly flattered. Go on. I am longing to hear it. I’m sure it’s exciting.”
“It was for me at the time—very.” And then he told her of the exploration of the King’s grave, and the long hours of that awful day, between two terrible forms of imminent death, told it so graphically as to hold her spellbound.
“There, that sounds like a tolerably tall up-country yarn,” he concluded, “but it’s hard solid fact for all that.”
“What a horrible experience,” said Lyn, with something of a shudder. “And now you won’t kill any snake?”
“No. That mamba held me at its mercy the whole of that day—and I have spared every snake I fell in with ever since. A curious sort of gratitude, you will say, but—there it is.”
“I don’t wonder the natives had that superstition about the King’s spirit passing into that snake.”
“No, more do I. The belief almost forced itself upon me, as I sat there those awful hours. But, as old Pemberton said, there was no luck about meddling with such places.”
“No, indeed. What strange things you must have seen in all your wanderings. It must be something to look back upon. But I suppose it will go on all your life. You will return to those parts again, until—”