He kept a trailing hold of Skag's wrist, staring a last minute in his eyes.
No break anywhere in the younger man's flesh.
The afterglow was thickening. A servant came down the path to call them to dinner. The servant had never seen such a spectacle—the Hakima sitting with Hand-of-a-God and Son-of-Power, together—on the lawn already wet with dew—their knees almost touching. . . .
"The like's not been known before, Lad—even of a man with a sword," Malcolm M'Cord was saying. "You must have stood up to him two minutes. No swordsman has done as much. . . . And it was only a lakri you had—and a swordsman's blade goes soft and flat against a cobra's scales! . . . You see, they take wings when the fighting rage flows into them. It's like wings, sir. . . . Yes, you'll have a lame arm where the hood grazed. It couldn't have been the drive of the head or he would have bitten through—"
Even Skag, as he glanced into Carlin's face from time to time, forgot that Hand-of-a-God had done it again—one more king cobra with a patched |head and a life and death story to be added to the sunny cabinet in the bungalow. . . . Carlin rose to lead them to dinner at last, but Malcolm shook his head.
"On you go, you two. I'll sit out a bit in the lamplight, just here by the playhouse door. . . . She'll be looking for him soon. . . . She won't be far. She won't be long coming—to look for him. . . . She'd find him and then set out to look for you, Lad."
The lights of the bungalow windows were like vague cloths upon the lawn. . . . Carlin and Skag hadn't thought of dinner. They were in the shadow of the deep verandah. Once Carlin whispered:
"I loved the way he said 'Lad' to you."
It was hours afterwards that the shot was heard. . . . Carlin was closer. He felt her shivering. He could not be sure of the words, yet the spirit of them never left his heart:
"If I were she—and I had found you so—upon the lawn—I should want
Hand-of-a-God to wait for me—like that!"