It was minutes before the bodies of two great king-cobras could be
made out, moving against the woman's spangled dress. The basket
lid was resting on their heads, and as the music and the chanting
rose to a wild weird shriek the lid rose too, until suddenly the
woman snatched the lid away and the snakes were revealed, with hoods
raised, hissing the cobra's hate-song that is prelude to the poison-death.

They struck at the woman, one after the other, and she leaped out
of their range, swift and as supple as they. Instantly then she
joined in the dance, with the snakes striking right and left at her.
Left and right she swayed to avoid them, far more gracefully than
a matador avoids the bull and courting a deadlier peril than he--
poisonous, two to his one. As she danced she whirled both arms above
her head and cried as the were-wolves are said to do on stormy nights.

Some unseen hand drew a blind over the great window and an eerie
green-and-golden light began to play from one end of the room,
throwing the dancers into half-relief and deepening the mystery.

Sweet strange scents were wafted in from under the silken hangings.
The room grew cooler by unguessed means. Every sense was treacherously
wooed. And ever, in the middle of the moving light among the
languorous dancers, the snakes pursued the woman!

"Do you do this often?" wondered King, in a calm aside to Rewa Gunga,
turning half toward him and taking his eyes off the dance without any,
very, great effort.

Rewa Gunga clapped his hands and the dance ceased. The woman spirited
her snakes away. The blind was drawn upward and in a moment all