Page:Oriental Stories v01 n01 (1930-10).djvu/98

 walls, no serpent could den here. Impossible! He was imagining things.

Nevertheless he remained facing toward the spot where he thought he had heard the sound, bent forward as though he would force aside the curtain of blackness and see if a snake were really there.

A dry, leisurely rasping sounded out from another corner of the pit. He whirled to listen, leaning his weight full on his broken wrist in the heedless intensity of his effort to hear. The noise continued, stopped for an instant, came again as though nearer to him.

Like an answering whisper, the rustling was renewed in the corner where he had first thought he heard it. From each side sounded the rasping as of dry, cold scales on rough stone. And from each side the sound seemed to come ever closer.

Another murmurous rustle scraped his ears—and another. From all directions came the whisper of fat, thick coils looping over the rock of the floor—converging as they moved dully to see what strange thing had fallen into their home.

There must be dozens, scores of them. And all moving with that faint scratchy sound as they neared him. He drew up his knees, and huddled into his corner for fear at any moment he might feel one of the heavy coils wound around his leg.

His heart thudded in his throat until a little sheet of red spurted before his eyes at every throb. One man, defenseless and alone, in a pit that was literally carpeted with writhing cobras!

Nearer sounded the rustling. As though the darkness had suddenly been lifted, he could fairly see the slowly narrowing circle of snakes closing in on him. Nearer

The nerve ends in his skin jerked and fluttered as he felt in anticipation the contact of the reptiles. Soon, now, soon—and they would be touching him.

He put his hand to the floor to brace his trembling body—and cried aloud as his fingers came squarely down on a round, cold thing. Consciousness began to fade, till he was jerked back to alertness by the thought that he must not faint.

As the contact burned again and again in remembrance, it occurred to him that it might not have been a snake, but merely a ridge in the cold, smooth rock; he had not been bitten, and the thing, whatever it was, had not moved. But for no reward could he have forced his fingers to explore there again. The thought that a cobra might be coiled motionless within a foot of him was less horrible than the chance of deliberately touching one with his bare hand!

The dry rasping was louder now, and nearer. From all directions he could hear it

His leg jerked out spasmodically as there was the feeling of something brushing slowly against it. That would not do. He must not do that! His only hope—if any hope was left him—lay in remaining as motionless as the stone itself. He had read that somewhere. A motionless body is never bitten by a snake.

Something moved across his ankle, as though a section of rope were being pulled over it. Through his thin sock he could feel every flowing of chill, serpentine muscle. Sweat poured from his body, but he stayed quiet.

The snake curled up against the warmth of his leg. And as minute after minute ticked by, Weiss held himself motionless though the hair of his scalp prickled and each repressed breath caught in his throat. O. S.—6