"Pretty lucky, wasn't I?" he said.
"Yes," agreed the Major, drily, "you were pretty lucky!"
The beaters had come up. Lindsey ordered them to carry the game for distribution among his villagers. The sun was dipping behind the hills as the three started back the trail through the dense woods, Lindsey leading the way and searching for signs of the wounded boar. Every few rods he found a pool of blood where it had paused in flight.
They entered the deep shadow cast by the spread of a great banyan tree from whose thick branches a score of accessory trunks were sent down to seek root in the soil. Rooting, they grew into smooth, heavy supports for the wide-spread limbs which towered above the surrounding forest. Terry paused a moment in the twilight of the tree, studying appreciatively the miniature forest of trunks parented by the one ancient growth. Suddenly a warning cry escaped his lips as he saw one of the long dark trunks, a foot in diameter, loosen from a branch where it hung suspended high over the Major's head.
"Look out, Major!"
He leaped forward, expecting to find the Major crushed, but involuntarily halted midway in his stride as the heavy trunk, landing at the Major's feet with a slithering thud, writhed a terrible length into massive folds. No eye could follow the inconceivably swift contortions that wrapped the Major in a triple fold.
Two heavy coils prisoned his legs, a third passed round his back up over his right shoulder to curve to the trail in front of him and rear again in a length which terminated in a massive head poised six feet from the Major's blanched face. Demon-eyed, unwinking, its thin lips bisected the thick-boned jaws in frightful, moist grimace.
Lindsey, horror-stricken, stood helpless while the hammer head catapulted at the sickened face of its victim. The Major's free left arm, raised instinctively to blot out the sight of the living horror, took the terrific impact, then dropped to his side, paralyzed. Still bearing that hideous grin the flat head drew back for another blow at the exposed face. The Major, faint with the terror of his helplessness and the crushing weight of the quivering masses of muscle about him, would have fallen but for their dread support. His consciousness fast deserting him, fascinated, he watched the monstrous leer as the head drew farther back, poised. He felt the agonizing pressure as the great muscles steeled for the blow, and in the moment before his senses departed, heard two crashing shots that sounded from behind him. With the smashing reports the poised head thudded to the ground, the folds fell from about him and he slid down among the great quivering coils.
Recovering consciousness, the horror crept back into his face but receded when he saw Terry standing by him. Still faint and sick he struggled to his feet, leaning against the trunk of the banyan and stamping his feet weakly to restore the still numb legs. Terry helped him hobble over to where the Bogobos, who had come up at the shots, were grouped about the dead monster. Lindsey, kneeling to examine the head of the great reptile, struck a match to point out the jagged wounds that had shattered the base of the head.
"Cut the spinal cord," he explained quietly. He was as pale as the Major. "Any other wound, even fatal,—it's death struggles would have—I hate to think of it, Major."