THE END COULD NOT BE LONG DEFERRED; YET THE MAN
FOUGHT ON.
With a half-strangled shriek of terror he caught himself back against the crossed davit and the stanchion, just in time to involve them in the coiling horror. His right arm, instinctly thrown aloft, grasped vainly at the throat of a huge serpent whose darting head cut fantastic silhouettes against the Milky Way, while its body tightened swiftly about his middle.
Had it not been for the iron rods that shielded him, Howard’s first cry would have been his last. To the great snake the resistance of a man’s body was as nothing. One unhampered constriction of its mighty coils would have crushed an ox. But the davit and the stanchion stood firm; not for nothing had they been planned to withstand the assaults of the sea. They held firm, while Howard, with starting eyeballs and slowly crushing chest, strove to beat back the forked death that flicked about his face.
The end could not be long deferred; yet the man fought on, as living things will fight for life—life so common, life so cheap, yet so desperately clung to. He fought and shrieked until the ever-tightening constriction stopped the inflation of his lungs; till the roaring in his ears swelled to thunder; till the driven blood burst from his ears and nostrils.
Then came a flash and a louder roar; the gleaming eyes that confronted him grew suddenly dull; the great coils relaxed and fell away; dimly he saw Dorothy’s face; her gown white in the moonlight; the smoking pistol in her hand.
Then girl and snake and moon and sky blended in one common blur of blackness. For the first time in his life Frank Howard fainted.
When he came to, he was lying on the deck, with his head in Dorothy’s lap. On his face her tears dropped slowly, one by one. As, dazed, he lay still for an instant, he heard her pray:
“Oh, God! God!” she sobbed, “give him back to me! Give my darling back to me.”
A mad throb of exultation crossed through Howard’s veins to be followed by a quicker revulsion. “Not yet, oh, God!” he implored in his turn silently. “Not until——”
He opened his eyes and looked up into hers.