it went home just as the savage teeth were snapping at his throat. For
an instant the great reptile flopped in an impotent half-circle,
partly reared out of the water. It gave Warwick a chance to shoot, a
single instant in which the rifle seemed to whirl about in his arms,
drive to his shoulder, and blaze in the deepening twilight. And the
shot went true. It pierced the mugger from beneath, tearing upward
through the brain. And then the agitated waters of the ford slowly
grew quiet.

The last echo of the report was dying when Singhai stretched his
bleeding arms about Warwick's body, caught up the rifle and dragged
them forty feet up on the shore. It was an effort that cost the last
of his strength. And as the stars popped out of the sky, one by one,
through the gray of dusk, the two men lay silent, side by side, on the
grassy bank.

Warwick was the first to regain consciousness. At first he didn't
understand the lashing pain in his wrists, the strange numbness in one
of his legs, the darkness with the great white Indian stars shining
through. Then he remembered. And he tried to stretch his arm to the
prone form beside him.

The attempt was an absolute failure. The cool brain dispatched the
message, it flew along the telegraph-wires of the nerves, but the
muscles refused to react. He remembered that the teeth of the mugger
had met in one of the muscles of his upper arm, but before
unconsciousness had come upon him he had been able to lift the gun to
shoot. Possibly infection from the bite had in some manner temporarily
paralyzed the arm. He turned, wracked with pain, on his side and
lifted his left arm. In doing so his hand crossed before his eyes--and