He cleared his throat; then laughed.
"I'll get past all this," he muttered. "Go on, Carlin—"
"I heard a step behind," she said. "It was my uncle—the most wonderful of many uncles. I have not seen him since that day. He is a little older than my eldest brother—possibly thirty at that time—tall, dark, silent; a frowning man, but not to me. Even then he belonged to one of the little brotherhoods of the Vindhas—lesser, you know, in relation to the great brotherhoods of the Himalayas. In fact it is from the Vindha Hills that they move on when they are called—up the great way and beyond—"
Another of Carlin's themes—always the dream in her mind of climbing to the heights.
"We walked on together through one of the paths—some time I will show you. It was not like anyone else coming to find a child, or coming to take it back. A most memorable thing to a little one, this elaborate consideration from a great man. He did not suggest that I turn. He made himself over to my adventure."
She waited for Skag to see more of the picture from her mind than her words suggested:
"Ahead on the path—leisurely, like nothing else, a cobra reared, a king cobra, as great as any of these. He barred our way. There comes a penetrating cold from the first glance. It's like an icy lance to the centre of consciousness. Then I felt the man's presence beside me. My confidence was that which only a child can give. What the mind knows and fears has too much dominion afterward. . . . The appalling power and beauty of the cobra fascinated me. I have never quite forgotten. There was a lolling trailing grace about the lifted length, the head slightly inclined to us, the hood but partly spread—something winged in the undulation, a suggestion of that which we could not see, faintly like the whir of a humming bird's wings. That is it—an intimation of forces we had not senses to register—also colours and sounds! . . . My hand was lost in the great hand. My uncle did not turn back. He was speaking. There was that about his tones which you had to listen for—a low softness that you had to listen to get. Yes, it was to the cobra that he spoke.
". . . There was never a poem to me like those words, but they did not leave themselves in continuity. I could not say the sentences again. I seem to remember the vibration—some sense of the mysterious, kindred with all creatures—and a vast flung scroll of wisdom and poetry, as if the serpents had been a great and glorious people of blinding, incredible knowledges—never like us—but all the more marvellous for their difference! . . . And the cobra hung there, his eyes darkening under the gentleness of the voice—then reddening again like fanned embers. . . .
"Then I heard my uncle ask to be permitted to pass, saying that he brought no harm to the mother, undoubtedly near, nor to the baby cobras—only good-will; but that it was not well for a man and a little girl to be prevented from passing along a man-path. . . . It was only a moment more that the way was held from us. There was no rising at all, to fighting anger. A cobra doesn't, you know, until actual attack. In leisurely undulations, he turned and entered the deeper growths. A moment later my uncle pointed to the lifted head in the shadows. One had need to be magic-eyed to see. We went on a little way and walked back. It was not that we had to pass—but that we must not be obstructed." . . .
This was the India that astonished Skag more than all hunter tales, more than any hunter prowess; but there were always two sides. . . . The weeks were unlike any others he had ever known. The mystery deepened between him and Carlin. Almost the first he had heard of her was that she was "unattainable"—yet they had known each other at once. . . . Still Carlin was unattainable; forever above and beyond. Such a woman is no sooner comprehended on one problem than she unfolds another; much of man's growth is from one to another of her mysteries. And always when he has passed one, he thinks all is known; and always as another looms, he realises how little he knows after all. . . .