ble reservations between
them--but undoubtedly friends.

There was a kind of stillness in the place and hour, as they stood
together, that made it seem they had never been alone before. Deep awe
had come to Skag. As he looked now upon her beauty and health and
courage, with eyes that saw another loveliness weaving all wonders
together--he knew a kind of bewildered revolt that life was actually
bounded by a mere few years; that it could be subject to change and
chance. Thus he learned what has come to many a man in the first hours
after bringing his great comrade home--that there must be some inner
fold of romance to make straight the insistent torture at the thought
of illness and accident and death itself--something somehow to enable a
man to transcend all three-score and ten affairs and know that birth
and death are mere hurdles for the runners of real romance.

. . . The sunlight brought out faint but marvellous gleamings from the
serpents. It was as if every scale had been a jewel. . . . Skag
looked closer. It wasn't bad mounting. It was really marvellous
mounting. His eye ran from one to another. Every cobra's head had
been shattered by a bullet. The broken tissues had been gathered
together, pieced and sewn--the art of the workman not covering the
dramatic effect entirely, yet smoothing the excess of the horror away.

". . . I've heard of cobras always, yet I never tire and never seem any
nearer them," Carlin was saying. "I remember the word _cobra_ when I
heard it the first time--almost the first memory. It never becomes
familiar. They are mysterious. One can never tell the why or when
about _them_. One never gets beyond the fascination. The more you
know the more you prepare for them in India. It's like this--any other
room would have windows that open. . . . Cobras have much fidelity.
We think of them as reptiles; and yet they are life-and-death-mates,
like the best of tiger pairs. One who kills a cobra must kill two or
look out--"

Carlin had strange lore about mated pairs; about moths and birds and
other creatures (as well as men-things) finding each other and living
and working together; about a tiger that had mourned for many seasons
alone, after some sportsman had killed his female; about another
rollicking young tiger pair that leaped an eight foot wall into a
native yard in early evening, made their kill together of a plump young
cow, and passed it up and over the wall between them