Instantly the white cobra reared up to its utmost and remained poised over Amber, barely moving save for the almost imperceptible throbbing of the hood and the incessant darting of the forked tongue.
"If he be loyal, then spare him …"
The hood did not move. Amber's flesh crawled with unspeakable dread.
"If he be faithless, then … strike!"
For another moment the cobra maintained the tensity. Then slowly, cruel head waving, hood shrinking, eyes losing their deathly lustre, coil by coil it sank.
A thick murmur ran the round of the walls, swelling into an inarticulate cry, which beat upon Amber's ears like the raving of a far-off surf. From his lips a strangled sob broke, and, every muscle relaxing, he lurched forward.
Alarmed, in a trice the cobra was up again, hood distended to the bursting point, head swinging so swiftly that the eye could not follow it. In another breath would come the final thrust….
A firearm exploded behind Amber, singeing his cheek with its flame. He fell over sideways, barely escaping the head of the cobra, which, with its hood blown to tatters, writhed in convulsions, its malignant tongue straining forth as if in one last attempt to reach his hand.
A second shot followed the first and then a brisk, confused fusillade. Amber heard a man scream out in mortal agony, and the dull sound of a heavy body falling near him; but, coincident with the second report, the brazier had been overturned and its light extinguished as if sucked up into the air.