The head played before him. The breadth of the hood alone held it at all in the range of the human eye—so swift was the lateral vibration, a sparring movement. The whole head seemed delicately veiled in a grey magnetic haze. Its background was Carlin—standing on the threshold.
"I won't fail—if you stay there!" he called.
It was like a wraith that answered—again the old mystery, as if the words came up from his own heart:
"I—shall—not—come—to—you—until—the—end!"
Skag was back in the indefinite past—all the dear hushed moments he had ever known massed in her voice.
"Stay there—not nearer—and I can't fail!"
He was saying it like a song—his eyes not leaving the narrow veiled head before him. It was like a brown sealed lily-bud of hardened enamel, brown yet iridescent—set off by two jewels of flaming rose. There was no haste. The king's mouth was not tight with strain. It was the look of one certain of victory, certain from a life that knew no failures—the look of one that had learned the hunt so well as to make it play. . . .
The brown bud vanished. Skag struck at the same time. His lakri touched the hood. With all his strength, though with a loose whipping wrist, he had struck. The lakri had touched the hood, but there was no violence to the impact. . . . Carlin's love tones were in his heart. Skag laughed.
The head went out of sight. Skag struck again. It was as if his lakri were caught in a swift hand and held for just the fraction of a second. No force to the man's blow. The cobra was no nearer; no show of haste. Skag's stick was a barrier of fury, yet twice the king struck between . . . twice and again. Skag felt a laming blow upon a muscle of his arm as from sharp knuckles.
And now they were fast at it. The man heard Carlin's cry but not the words: