quiet curt voice. "Noise enough for a
gang of crows----"

Surgeon-Captain Blake of the Royal Army Medical Corps had just left
the Hospital, having been sent for by the night Nursing Sister. The
men sprang to attention and the Sergeant saluted.

"Drunk sentry left 'is post, Sir," he gabbled. "'Spose the Dead
'Ole--er--Morshuerry, that is, Sir, got on 'is nerves. 'E's given to
secret boozin', Sir----"

"Excuse me, Sir," broke in Dam, daring to address an Officer unbidden,
since a life was at stake, "I am a total abstainer and Trooper
Priddell is not dead. It must have been cataleptic trance. I heard him
groan and I climbed up and saw him lying on the ground."

"This man's not drunk," said Captain Blake, and added to himself, "and
he's an educated man, and a cultured, poor devil."

"Oh, that's how 'e goes on, Sir, sober as a judge you'd say, an' then
nex' minnit 'e's on the floor aseein' blue devils an' pink
serpients----"

"The man's dying while we talk, Sir," put in Dam, whose wrath was
rising. (If these dull-witted ignorant louts could not tell a drunken
man from a sober, nor realize that a certified dead man may _not_ be
dead, surely the doctor could.)

The Sergeant and the Corporal ventured on a respectful snigger.

"Bring me that lamp," said Captain Blake, and Trooper Bear raised it
to his extended hand. Lifting it so that its light shone straight in
Dam's face the doctor scanned the latter and examined his eyes. This
was not the face of a drunkard nor was the man in any way under the
influence of liquor now. Absurd! Had he fever? Was he of deranged
intellect? But, alas, the light that shone upon Dam's face also shone
upon Captain Blake's collar and upon the badge of his Corps which
adorned it--and that badge is a serpent entwining a rod.

It was the last straw! Dam had passed through a most disturbing night;
he had kept guard in the lonely Snake-haunted darkness, guard over a
mortuary in which lay a corpse; he had had to keep knocking at the
corpse's door, his mind had run on funerals, he had thought he heard
the dead man groan, he believed he had seen the dead man moving, he
had wrestled with thick intelligences who held him drunk or mad while
precious moments passed, and he had had the Snake before his mental
vision throughout this terrible time--and here was another of its
emissaries _wearing its badge_, an emissary of high rank, an
Officer-Emissary!... Well, he was in the open air, thank God, and
cou