Simpson! Send for Doctor McMorris!" cried Hardwicke, as a dozen
willing hands sprang to aid him. "Bring brandy, ammonia, and oil!" There
was a bamboo settee on the veranda. It received the precious burden
which the soldier had held against his heart. "Carry her to her rooms!
Gently, now!" commanded the captain. Seizing Justine by the arm, he
said: "I think that I arrived in time. Go! Go! You will find me waiting
for you here! Examine her at once! The hot iron and artery ligatures
alone will save her if she was bitten!" His brow was knotted in agony.

"You came between them!" gasped Justine. "The thing never reached her
side!"

"God be thanked! Go! Go!" cried Hardwicke. "I have my work to do here!"
A black servant had already led the dancing Garibaldi out to the
open safety of the graveled carriage drive. "Look to my horse!" cried
Hardwicke. "See that he is not bitten!" and then he slowly walked over
to where a dozen menials, with heavy clubs, had beaten the writhing
cobra into a shapeless mass.

"Come away, all of you!" cried the captain, in Hindustanee. "Run, some
of you, and get the snake catcher!" Doctor McMorris, arriving on the
gallop, had reported the absolute safety of the frightened girl,
when Harry Hardwicke, leaning on his sheathed sword, watched a slim,
glittering-eyed Hindu, followed by a boy bearing an earthen pot, who had
noiselessly reconnoitered the vicinity of the great tree. The boy most
keenly watched all the movements of his white-robed master, who, drawing
a little fife from his red cummerbund sash, began to play a shrill,
weird tune. A frightened household coterie watched from a safe distance
the thirty-foot circle of herbage around the shade of the giant tree
trunk. A shudder crept over the watchers as a huge brown head, with two
white circles on the back of the neck, rose slowly out of the grass, and
two red-hot gleaming eyes blazed out, as an immense cobra swelled out
its fearfully disgusting hood, and, rising halfway, bloated out its
loathsome head, swaying to and fro, to the strange music. "There's the
mate!" quietly whispered Hardwicke to Simpson. The snake now showed its
greasy belly, like dirty stained marble, and the lithe boy, circling
behind it, warily essayed to drop the red earthen pot over its head.
But one of the excited servants, stealing up, had released a little
mongoose, which now bravely darted upon its deadly enemy.

Seven times did the active little animal dart upon the hug