rike, the eyes flaming into an altogether different
dimension for battle.

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:

"Stay there!" he sang in answer. "Not nearer--just there and I can't
lose! . . . It isn't in the cards to lose, Carlin--"

Yet his mind knew he could not win. The cobra's head and hood recoiled
with each blow. It took Skag's highest speed--as an outfielder takes a
drive bare-handed, his hands giving with the ball. The head moved past
all swiftness, even the speed greatest swordsmen know. It was like
something that laughed. Before the whirring _lakri_, the cobra head
played like a flung veil between and through and around.