Spellbound, they gazed at something that flickered in the opening at a height of about three feet from the ground, something strange, black, supple, that quivered in the air like a thin flame of fire, insignificant in size, yet suggestive in its lightning play of something terrible. Scarcely breathing, they waited for what was to follow, and in a moment found themselves looking into the unwinking eyes of a huge serpent. The long head and about two feet of the muscular neck alone showed, held high above the ground, and remaining there fixed as if cast in bronze. The sunlight pouring on the large scales made them glow like bits of burnished metal in tints of blue and yellow, while a greenish light smouldered in the unwinking eyes. In the actual size of the head there was nothing alarming. It was no bigger than a man’s hand, with the thumb bent in, the fingers extended, and the knuckles arched, while the neck was no thicker than a man’s wrist. A strong man might grasp it by the neck and strangle it—so Webster thought—but the eyes—ah! in their fixed, impenetrable stare, there was the suggestion of unknown power and mysterious force. Suddenly the forked tongue darted out from the aperture in the grim jaws, quivered rapidly, and then the head was withdrawn.
“Thank God!” murmured Webster.
With a faint cry, Laura fainted away, and was mercifully spared the fresh trial.
“Ah! heavens! Again!” whispered Webster, while, with an awful cry, the Gaika wriggled back to the far end of the room, and turned his face to the wall.
Suddenly the snake darted its head along the floor, and the body poured in with a swift and silent motion, the muscles standing out in a ridge along its swelling bulk. Half-way it reached across the floor in that swift dart; then its head and neck curved back, and the body was bent like a huge S to permit the fatal strike at its destined victim.
“I can feel there is something awful in the room,” said Hume, in hollow tones; “tell me what!”
Webster gulped down a lump in his throat. “A snake!” he gasped, and his eyes, wild and starting, were held as in a spell. He was the nearer, for Sirayo had shrunk against the wall at the side. This thing he felt could only take one. He was to be that one. Well, all right; he would not see Laura die.
Then he went through an ordeal that nearly shook his reason. The snake moved its head from side to side, and his head moved also. The tongue darted out, and his lips quivered. The head was suddenly uplifted, and he staggered to his feet. He began to laugh—foolishly—and his features twitched horribly. His body swayed to and fro, and, with an inarticulate cry he fell forward, his outstretched hands striking against the cold scales. With a loud hiss the reptile darted forward till its head rested on Laura’s insensible body, and its coils gathered upon Webster’s. So it remained a minute, then the head was reared against the wall, the leaves rustled to the strange, flowing movement of the heavy coils, the tail presently slithered over the sand, went up the wall, and disappeared.
Sirayo followed it with bloodshot eyes, looked a moment at the entrance to see if some new horror were in store, looked at the motionless figures about him, then shouted in Zulu: “It is gone; wake up!”
As if in response to his shout, a low music broke out, thin and monotonous, the strains from a native bow, and gradually, as each one of the helpless band revived, they listened with intense relief to these signs of human presence. In the grim silence of that room they had begun to think that there was something magical in the manner of their capture, and they would have welcomed any foe in human form rather than think of another visit from the python.