"By Jenkins!" muttered Venning; and the two knitted their brows as they peered down into the shadows, for the branch certainly was moving, and moving away as if it meant to part company with the trunk. Their glances ran along the branch outwards, and then their eyes suddenly dilated, and their bodies stiffened.
So they stood like images, their hands clasping a branch, their heads thrust forward, and their eyes staring. On the same level with their heads and about twelve feet off was the head of that moving "branch," square-nosed, wedge-shaped, with the line of the jaws running right round to the broad part under the eyes, and a black- forked tongue flickering through an opening beneath the nostrils, It was the fixed stare of the lidless eyes, and the rigid position of the grim head poised in mid air on a neck that began like the muscular wrist of an athlete, thickening to where it was anchored on a branch three feet away to the size of an athlete's leg. And while the head, with the three feet of neck remained rigid, the body was gliding out and up, finding an anchorage in the forks of the tree on a level with the head, in readiness for the attack.
With an effort they drew their eyes away from that cold glance that held them almost paralyzed and glanced down. Beyond, the light branches shook as the huge coils passed over them. Such coils! As they moved into the sunlight they saw the glitter of the scales and the ridges of the muscles, and the movement was like the movement of several serpents instead of one.
Venning looked again at the motionless head. "When it has gathered its length behind and above its head," he said slowly, "it will strike."
"And you dropped the guns!"
"No one can stare a snake out—no one," said Venning; and his eyes were fixed.
"How far can it strike?"
"It has no lids to its eyes. It just looks and looks. Compton!"
Compton took Venning by the arm and shook him. "Come on," he cried.
"What are we standing here for?"
But as he spoke his eyes went up involuntarily, and his pupils expanded.